Foxhole Sonata
by Atropos' Knife
Summary: A desolate outpost. A second encounter. A discussion leading to a dubious choice. For just one moment, she desperately tries not to remember any of her sins... by sharing them with the man who taught her to never forget. Set during the Ishval campaign; mangaverse. Warning: Dark themes.
1. Act I: Contrition

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. "Fullmetal Alchemist" is the awesome property of Hiromu Arakawa.

**A/N: **Kimblee/Riza. Set during the Ishval War of Extermination. An imagining of what if, what might have, or what could have happened in the gap between Kimblee's definitive lecture to the shell-shocked soldiers and the Kimblee-led Kanda campaign (using the Philosopher's Stone), which effectively ends the war. Rated for gore and strong sexual situations. Not your usual pairing, I know, but the story includes tiny hints of Royai. Reviews and comments are highly appreciated. Thank you for reading. Cheers!

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><p>Act I: Contrition<p>

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><p><em>"Look at the people you're killing in the face and don't forget them. Don't forget. Never forget."<em>

_"…because they won't forget you, either."_

The words resonated in her head, strong and steadfast as the beat of her heart, thrumming in cadence to the faint peal of the bell in Ishval's main square that signaled the crack of another day in this created hell.

_0.00 Hours_. Kill tally: three Ishvalan insurgents. The soft far-off clang of the bell not only meant the woman could start the end of her shift in this sector but was also an all-too-brief interval from the crackle of gunfire and the sporadic boom of artillery that punctuated the night.

She sighed and moved her face away from the rifle scope to blink away the strain in her eyes. Officer Cadet Riza Hawkeye, Scout Sniper, 1st Squadron of the Reconnaissance and Target Tactics Battalion, Amestris Central Army found herself getting assigned – or was it having requested? She wasn't sure anymore – these drudging night patrol duties for the past three days. It had been four since the words began taking root in her mind, their tendrils winding around her concentration and rationality in a chokehold. It even felt as if they were working down her arm to the tip of her trigger finger, making it vacillate ever so slightly when previously it had been so sure.

For three straight days, Riza had chosen to forgo a backup scout squad, a spotter allowed to her on normal daytime missions, and a night's rest on a cot, all in favor of riskier night sentry duty where she would be alone, hiding in the darkness with unfamiliar shadows twisting around corners of buildings in the distance – as well as creeping in the terrifying corners of the walls surrounding her. This she chose if simply – but temporarily - instead of dozens of doomed targets, the proud precision of her gun connected with just a handful.

That meant fewer corpses to remember. Fewer souls to haunt her memory.

Tonight, Riza considered herself fortunate, if she could call it that at all. She was posted in the lower-class residential district of Gunja where the army had taken full control just a week prior. The town was currently under mop-up operations and was generally quiet save for the odd insurgent or guerilla bomber attempting to sneak into the Amestrian Army main base camp whose fringes lay just a kilometer from the town's western borders. Riza stationed herself on the rooftop pavilion of one of the tallest buildings on the northern outskirts of Gunja which faced a vast sandstone mesa reported to be hiding pockets of Ishvalan resistance. The district's proximity to the mountains made its north border a weak link in the army's defensive line, but the high command had started moving the main thrust of its forces for a final offensive against the Ishvalan stronghold of Kanda and had no choice but to trust recon platoons and sniper scouts like her to hold it.

The young cadet figured the Ishvalans had focused their sights on the upcoming Kanda push as well. Three kills was a record low for her in this conflict, albeit a positive one if her weary soul had any say in it. The moon and the stars played a big part in this reversal of fortune, shrouded as they were under heavy cloud cover. There was no break in the gray swathe that the wind billowed in the sky and the promise of a thunderstorm was as certain as another Ishval red dawn. For hours, Riza scanned the blocks of white adobe ruins in her scope's sweeping periphery, finding it difficult to distinguish between moving black shadows and imaginary ghosts conjured by her mind. It had taken a couple of passes on her sight grid to be convinced that, yes, she had made three kills: two center mass hits and one headshot. She knew she was not in her element tonight. One of the men she had shot in the chest was still convulsing a few seconds after bullet impact and her sniper's eye simply stared through the scope; that instead of pulling back on the rifle bolt and going for a double tap to the head, she watched the dying throes… became mesmerized by the progression of blood as it quickly dyed the Ishvalan's robe red with every rise and fall of his life-gasping lungs.

Had she allowed the man a final desperate prayer to his god? Or did she merely give him precious seconds to utter final curses damning his killer's soul to an eternal hell?

Riza's fingers suddenly dropped to the side of her gun as her sights passed the long-still corpse of that man for heaven knows how many times. Her trained body hardly betrayed it, but the sniper's heart pounded heavily against the rubble-strewn concrete floor of the roof as she sprawled in prone position.

"Shit," Riza muttered under her breath as instinct forced her hand back into the familiar mold of the rifle's trigger and stock like a magnet. Hoping to recharge away her fatigue, she deeply drew in cool, humid air. She then exhaled sharply when a short static pop interrupted the kinetoscope of images and broken phonograph of sounds in her brain.

"Red Tail, come in. Red Tail, over."

Keeping her right eye fixed on her sights, Riza reached with her left arm to grab the two-way radio leaning on the low roof ledge in front of her.

"This is Red Tail, go ahead," she replied hoarsely to the voice on the other end of the channel.

"Peregrine reporting position at GD Sector 3B north-west from your station," answered the sniper assigned to relieve Riza in that area.

She craned her neck to the left to confirm he was referring to a mid-rise tenement two lots up from her location. "Copy, Peregrine."

"What's your status?"

"Three targets eliminated from this area, so far."

A few seconds elapsed before Riza received an acknowledgement. "Are you sure, Red Tail? I'm seeing four bodies from this spot, over."

Riza dropped the radio and furrowed her brows above the metal of her weapon. She adjusted the scope's magnification and broadened her scan down range while her left hand felt around the floor for spent shell casings.

_I only fired three rounds_, she swore to herself. Unconvinced, Riza picked up the radio and whispered into the receiver, "Red Tail to make a visual on that, over."

"Affirmative. I'll take it from here then. C.O. requests your position at GD Sector 5C by 0400 hours."

"Roger, Peregrine." A gust blew the beginnings of a drizzle into the side of her stoic face. "Red Tail out."

The blonde sniper moved the radio away from her side. Keeping a constant light pressure on the trigger, her left hand cradled under the gun's front stock and then braced the butt firmly against the pocket of her right shoulder. Carefully, she lurched forward and angled the muzzle lower over the gap in the ledge. Within seconds, Riza caught the presence of an unfamiliar – and dead – target in her sights, located behind some ruins just a few yards off her building's perimeter.

"What the – " Riza hissed. Her pulse quickened uncharacteristically for a sniper. She knew it was impossible to have made this particular kill from the trajectory of her previous spot. And even from that distance, she could see the massive extent of the trauma inflicted on the body, damage surely not from one of her .30 caliber bullets. This was a heavy, close contact kill, with the man's torso blasted wide open revealing ribs clawing out of its cavity, looking like bony stamens growing around a pistil of organs and entrails. And surrounding it was a bloom of blood arranged in a perfect corolla of petals and sprays.

Riza couldn't wrench her eye away from the near-artful carnage. More, she could hardly believe she allowed herself to recognize a metaphor of beauty in this ugly scene. Why in this garden of death and destruction she could see a flower…

_A crimson flower._

"You missed one, Miss Sniper," a low voice ghosted somewhere from behind her.

With a sharp gasp, Riza pulled her rifle into a right arm tuck and swiftly pivoted onto her back. She lifted her torso a few inches from the ground, and with it, the gun; her target area partially framed by a bent left knee. Trepidly, the weapon's muzzle traced the ill-defined outlines of a shadow receding into the darkened stairwell leading up to the pavilion. Seconds passed where the shadow infuriatingly wavered between disappearing and taking shape. Nervously panting, Riza debated whether she should just fire into the void when two tattooed palms rose in a gesture of surrender.

The pale hands floated starkly against the murk and their strange inked crests, in turn, were prominent on the white. They almost seemed to carry a life of their own until the smiling face and blue military uniform of their possessor emerged from behind them.

Having seen the face of the shadow, Riza eased the tension of her tightly wound stance and sat up, but without disengaging her aim from the man – and superior officer – who now stood half-concealed behind the stairwell entry a couple of yards away. "Major, sir," she said, taming the flitter in her voice. "You surprised me there. If you hadn't shown yourself when you did, I would've shot you."

Major Solf J. Kimblee, State Alchemist, regarded the in-hindsight threat as though it were an everyday greeting. His easy smile did not falter as he lowered his right hand in concession, the other moon-marked one seeming as if waving hello. "From the way you have your rifle pointed at me; I think I might say the same to you."

Riza froze momentarily as the Crimson Alchemist's amusement-accented words stung. Wordlessly, she broke the impasse between them by raising her rifle, pulling on its bolt to open the breech, and ejected the unspent bullet from its chamber. Silently and adeptly, she laid the rifle in front of her and began to collect her sniper accoutrements in an orderly fashion – all the while sneaking furtive glances at Kimblee who now leaned casually against the door frame with arms crossed, narrow eyes watching her.

She wasn't taking too kindly to his intrusion of her somber rituals, but soldiered on methodically, nonetheless. "Sir, if I may ask, why are you patrolling this sector at this time of night?"

Kimblee looked toward the tableau of mountains off in the distance, the wind picking up and whipping sections of long, jet black hair across his face. "Area surveillance," he replied. "There are reports of a small band of rebels encamped at the foot of those cliffs. I was merely calculating range and vantages should my unit find need to… neutralize them."

"The distance between those mountains and the closest concealed position is 1.17 miles, Major," Riza offered matter-of-factly as she put away the radio pack and scope neatly into her haversack. The subtext underlying Kimblee's preferred 'neutralization' methods was not lost on her. But, surely, that span was too great for even his brand of alchemy, she thought.

"Is that so?" He turned to her, one of his knuckles grazing his chin thoughtfully. "Then I suppose, fortunately, it looks like we managed to subdue most of them tonight, eh?"

His bright amber eyes met dull brown in the gray moonlight. _Subdue_. Not a word Riza would ever use in reference to her – their – skills. "Major Kimblee, I was not informed of your presence in the vicinity." Her gaze fixed on his willfully. "I could've mistaken you for an enemy and targeted you."

The State Alchemist's brow shot up slightly. Flashing a cryptic smile, he countered, "If that had been the case, my careless self should be honored to die by a hand steeled by such conviction and precision…" Pause. "Because I know _you_ would be careful not to mistake me for an Ishvalan, Miss Sniper."

The enigmatic man's irrefutable retorts left the female sniper stumped. She was way beyond expecting even an iota of empathy from him for her choices as a fellow soldier, much less as a grunt not officially graduated from the military academy yet. However, Riza started to feel stirrings of awe – envy even - at how easily the major made himself liberated from and omniscient to a battlefield he simply saw in shades of black and red with nothing in between, and that she found his nihilism and, perhaps, his personal philosophies, oddly captivating.

On this, Riza decided to take her own high road by conceding to her weakness the only way she could. She swallowed hard before mumbling, "I appreciate you having my back down there, Major Kimblee..."

Brown eyes fluttered down. Cheeks flushed hotly. The skies above her opened up. "Thank you."

* * *

><p>"Mmm," Solf J. Kimblee hummed softly to himself while observing the cadet as she gathered her gear and wedged against the corner of the rooftop's balustrade. She had drawn her knees to her chest and planted the now sheathed rifle muzzle between them. He stood in rapt fascination of her body language unfolding before him, how he could almost count the hairline cracks forming in the woman's strong, indomitable façade in the way she gripped the gun barrel, how fingers pressed into her forehead and temple, and the indifference in which she regarded the increasing intensity of the rain falling on her forlorn form.<p>

It was the very picture of doubt.

She persisted in disappointing him from the moment he met her sitting guilt-ridden and shell-shocked in the main square. The alchemist still could not understand how the soldier had yet to reconcile the brutality of her expertise with the reality of war – however fair or unfair its reason for being was to her. How could she not accept that her motivations for picking up a gun were directly proportional to choosing to pick it up in the first place?

Kimblee did not think he was unreasonable to attribute her folly to youthful naiveté and neither did he expect her to share his rather… _unconventional_ views on human nature and its propensity for seeking conflict.

_Still..._

The young blonde intrigued him; that, possibly, a very small part of her could be as passionate about the business and beauty of death as he was.

He bit his bottom lip wistfully. _And liked flirting with it even._

* * *

><p>"Officer Cadet, I suggest you get out of the rain now," Kimblee gently called out. "You'll catch a cold if you stay there like that."<p>

It took several seconds for Riza to acknowledge his beckon before slowly raising her head in his direction, rivulets of water cascading from the hood of her black camouflage cloak as she did.

"Sir?"

"Come out of the rain, soldier." Repeated more forcefully this time, yet oh-so politely. "That was an order, not a request."

"Y-yes, sir!" Cut abruptly from her introspections, Riza slung her haversack and rifle over her shoulders and extracted herself from her location by crouching under the length of the roof's ledge and quickly ducking into the stairwell. To her surprise, arms caught her forward momentum and gracefully swung her to a side wall in one swift movement. Momentarily ensnared in Kimblee's loose grasp, Riza broke off the uneasy contact by attempting a cursory salute. "My apologies for not hearing you clearly the first time, sir."

He casually waved off the gesture. "No need, Miss Sniper. After all, we are supposed to maintain silence and you did seem quite focused on your mission. It is I who should apologize for apparently distracting you."

She had wanted to tell him that he started the distraction four days ago. "Major, you didn't… That's not – "

"Riza Hawkeye, is it not? Your name?" Kimblee saved her from explaining herself any further. His encircling arms had dropped to his sides but he persisted in asserting his proximity to her, close enough for droplets of water to drip from the hem of her cloak and onto the tips of his polished boots. "You don't mind if I took the liberty of finding out the name of the army's best sharpshooter, do you?"

"Of course not, sir," came her firm reply. Riza would have gapped their shared space if she had less wall to back into; instead, she held her ground against the tall, perfectly-postured officer. "And that is correct, Major Kimblee. Officer Cadet Hawkeye is my name."

"I've heard awe-inspired tales of the infamous 'Eye of the Hawk's' prowess, but, my, my, I didn't realize she took her duties so seriously to maintain her position even after completing a mission – in the rain, no less," he said, following it up with a hearty laugh. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Kimblee's right hand rose to Riza's face, flashing a brief glimpse of a transmutation circle arrayed with runes and the symbol of the sun before long fingers slid her hood down and nestled it neatly across her shoulders.

She barely suppressed a startled gasp but continued to stand fast. The reveal of flaxen hair was a welcome burst of luminosity in the cramped darkness, the sight of which coaxed an appreciative smirk from the Crimson Alchemist. Although, as his gaze slanted downwards, he saw the snapped-off thumb break of a holster against her hip and noticed how the sniper's elbow had cocked ever so slightly, bringing her dominant hand's curling fingers parallel to the grip of the sidearm it held.

Kimblee took a small step away, a calculated glint twinkling in his hypnotic stare. The heat of Riza's confusion radiated from her cheeks.

"Miss Hawkeye, I wonder how it is possible you could not have noticed the movements of one particular Ishvalan in your grid."

"Sir?" The sniper's large chestnut-colored eyes blinked. "Are you referring to the one lying in front of this building?"

"Tsk. How unfortunate that they've begun to send their children now to do such dirty work. The boy didn't even look fifteen… Fourteen, perhaps, or maybe even thirteen…" he continued mostly to himself with a dramatic cluck of his tongue.

Riza's arms stiffened against her sides, hands clenched into fists. Even though she had her head turned away from him she wished she didn't have such short hair as to make the officer notice a grimace marring her face. _A child? That can't be. _Her heart racing, she tried remembering the events of the past few hours.

_23:05 hours_ – male, gunshot to the chest, incapacitated for several minutes, target eliminated. _22:00 hours_ – shadow lurking off an abandoned food stall in Sector 5A, later attributed to a stray dog. _20:50 hours_ – two male spies; one, a clean shot to the head, the other, near the heart; targets killed instantly.

Had the fourth victim masqueraded as a specter playing tricks on her mind? Surely, a child couldn't have escaped her view. And then, just when Riza thought she had logically accounted for her actions that night, there was another striking possibility that dawned on her:

_Would_ she have missed a child?

The cadet stumbled back at the realization. Could she really have deliberately spared a young boy only to leave him in the lethal hands of a notoriously merciless State Alchemist?

Frantically, she fumbled around her memory for fading details – something, anything – a flutter of cloth disappearing behind a corner… a flash of silver-white hair perhaps? But her mind's eye blurred with a hazy montage of night, shadows, sand, rubble, and blood. And nothing the sniper came up with could prove, or disprove, a plea of ignorance.

"Oh, are you remembering something just now? Ah, right. I do remember telling a group of you to never forget those you killed, didn't I?" Kimblee delivered the remark as casually as one reminding another to buy milk from the store.

"I'm sure if an excellent sniper as yourself saw an Ishvalan…" He punch-lined the quip by extending his arm at Riza, gesturing his hand like a gun and mock-shooting her with it.

"Bullseye."

The woman choked back her reaction in silence while abstractedly boxing herself into the corner of the niche. She hated to acknowledge the simple wisdom – and the ironic dignity – of that lecture coming from someone like Kimblee; hated that it replayed in her thoughts non-stop. But what she hated more than anything was herself – that, indeed, her pride in her skill proved him right.

But unlike Kimblee, who claimed to remember each and every one of those he killed, she didn't even afford any of her targets the dignity of a human face. She merely ticked them off as a number tally in her body count, identified them only by their bullet entry wounds, buried them deep in the recesses of her subconscious, and then moved on to the next victim. After all, with her sniper's advantage of stealth, high ground, and high-powered weaponry, at the time of reckoning, both killer (no, _coward_) and killed were faceless to each other anyway.

And yet, here she was now justifying the morality of sparing a child to herself. The soldier wondered if her immorality compared to the alchemist's _amorality_ made her any better – or worse – than he was.

"Major, I didn't see anyone else apart from the three targets I neutralized," Riza said, worrying if her voice faltered or if her gaze was shifty in its offering of a half-lie when the half-truth was, _'I don't know'_.

The corners of Kimblee's mouth curved down. "Hmm. Even the best snipers have their off days, I suppose." He proceeded to reach inside his coat. "It was pure providence that I was at the right area at the right time. The boy was standing on a crate behind a blind corner of the storefront a few paces from here. He was fixing the trajectory angle on a crude slingshot aimed directly at this rooftop…"

The Crimson Alchemist produced a gleaming black egg-shaped hand grenade cradled gingerly in his right palm.

"It's really not my style to create explosions that don't sound like a symphony of rumbles and crashes – but I made an exception in this case. What an _awful_ mess it made, though." He stooped and laid the grenade squarely in a corner of the stairwell opposite Riza, its conspicuous placement a subtle reminder of how this close she was to danger.

Wide eyes tracked the small ordnance as Kimblee put it down. Sensing knees, control, and wits failing her, Riza struck the rifle on the floor and leaned on it for support. For her sanity's sake, she desperately scanned his tone and expressions in the darkness for any indication of jest or deceit peeking behind the steadfast congeniality. But just as she had many reasons to doubt her own soldier's judgment, no matter how she tried, she could find no reason to doubt his.

The long-haired military officer stood up and slowly walked back to addressing the female soldier face-to-face. This time, however, he had closed more rank between them and she felt his warm breaths fan over her ear.

"I find it peculiar, and quite annoying, actually, how perfectly competent soldiers will at times lose… _focus_ on the job at hand. Why, just recently, a fellow Major carelessly overlooked two Ishvalan women escaping from a gap in a wall. Had I not taken care of that little oversight, he would've been court-martialed rather than merely relieved of his duty."

Riza lowered her head, chin almost to her chest. She had since abandoned all pretense of standing at attention in front of an officer by instinctively fusing herself fully into the cold wall behind her and away from the imposing man entrapping her with his elegant figure, his clean heady scent and self-assured aura. A part of her ridiculously mused how Kimblee even had a right to look so _refined_ in this bloody, dusty battlefield.

"I wonder what it is… Fear? Combat fatigue? Pity? Should that even matter when it's all really simple? You kill or be killed. Why should it even be possible to allow those factors to override basic survival instinct?"

Kimblee bent over to catch Riza's downcast eyes, amused she had been relegated from hardened soldier to confused teenager. "Miss Hawkeye," he reminded gently in an almost smoky whisper. "You can snipe from a high tower or you can conceal yourself under a blanket of darkness, but those who are a cause of death will always have death chase them in return. It's all just a cat and mouse game. Just stay one step ahead and death won't…" He leaned closer to the side of her face so that his lips feathered across her earlobe.

"_Catch you."_

She shuddered – less at the barely there touch and more at the intent.

With a slight smile playing on his features, the State Alchemist retreated from the stunned young woman and peered out the doorway where, for a moment, he listened to the low frequency beats of distant thunder while watching the storm fall in ash-colored sheets. "It looks like it's not going to let up anytime soon." A glimmer of silver emerged from beneath the navy blue folds of his uniform and a 'click' exposed the intricate dragon crest engraved on a pocket watch lid. A studied glance from its owner, another 'click' and it buried into his clothes as quickly as it appeared. A soft chuckle escaped his throat at the notion of Mother Nature as war's greatest equalizer.

"For friend or foe, I think this rain has called for a brief ceasefire, don't you agree?"

Turning with a graceful swish of his black ponytail, Kimblee began to go down the stone stairs. He hesitated at the fifth step to offer the cadet a last piece of advice.

"You'd best dry off before heading to your next outpost. The army would hate to lose you to illness just when you'll be needed most."

He waited a few seconds for sounds of a response. Hearing nothing, he shrugged, continued on his way, and called out in passing, "If you'd like, there are rooms below where we can wait out the weather."

Each of his forward steps hovered on delectable suspense, the tug of an invisible chain getting tauter with every inch measured between him and the sniper. But with Kimblee's silhouette melding deeper into the shadows came the hesitant shuffle of boots and a rustling of wet cloth from above.

The man's slight smile grew wider.

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><p><em>(to be continued)<em>


	2. Act II: Confession

Act II: Confession

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><p>Riza was not one to believe in – or to be fearful of – the physical manifestation of ghosts. But she increasingly found herself trying to reinforce that belief as she gripped the crude banister of the stairwell while descending blindly into its claustrophobic bowels. The atmosphere made it easy for the cadet to imagine frantic footfalls of marching soldiers and running civilians in the incessant pummel of rain, or to hear mournful wails of the dying in the wind howling from the gaps of the walls.<p>

Instead, Riza attuned her ears to the movements made by the State Alchemist who went on ahead of her, sensing him opening door after door two floors below her location. When she reached the landing of what was the tenement's third level, she finally considered her situation. It felt like she was being led from one battlefield to another, with neither offering her a flicker of guiding light. Cadet Riza Hawkeye realized how lost she was in this place, this war zone, this country long bathed in shadows and tempest. And when she came to that fork in her road, she couldn't begin to explain – perhaps never would – her choice to seek out the man who held this violent territory so easily in the palms of his hands.

Taking a deep, decisive breath, the woman snubbed the straight and narrow of the staircase leading to the outside and entered into the twisting corridors of the unknown.

* * *

><p>In what little amount of illumination the sparsely windowed aisles provided, Riza was given a peek at the miniature dramas that went on in each of the modest flats in the last minutes of their occupancy. She could almost watch the unfolding scenes of panic, of frantic packing, and crying children that went on beyond the open doors; leaving in their wake a sad disarray of possessions and remnants of normalcy left to rot as they lay frozen for posterity like a tragic still-life.<p>

Riza continued to walk with heavy padded steps down the nickelodeon arcade she had conjured for herself until she reached a flat near the end of the hall. Here, she had caught up with Major Solf J. Kimblee who was inside doing a rudimentary inspection of its provisions.

The small apartment was a stark one-room affair. On one side was a cooking area and water closet, while a large made-up bed took up the opposite end, the room's single slender window hanging high above it. In the middle of the floor were three chairs set around a wooden square table.

It wasn't the room's utter banality that struck Riza, but how devoid it was of the terrifying urgency that was so apparent in the others. It was as if the abode had been sealed in a vacuum, prepped to faithfully await the return of its Ishvalan residents who left it spic-and-span with optimism that the war would soon end and daily life would resume as usual.

But now that the time capsule had been broken in by strangers … enemies … its pristine cocoon began to reek a musty smell of pity and desolation, both for its emptiness and for its missing tenants.

_Of course he would choose this room out of all the others_, Riza thought, her heartbeats inexplicably doubling-up. She wondered if the man was prompted by its mere tidiness or piqued by its biting irony as well.

Determining that everything about the room was in order, Kimblee walked to the entryway to meet the new arrival. His dark coat had already been folded and draped neatly over a chair back. "This is as good a place as any to ride out the storm. Better than the rooftop at least," he quipped, a content expression crossing his features. He extended his right hand to Riza in a formal invite. "Please do come in and join me, Miss Hawkeye."

Briefly, she searched him and herself for some logical, valid reason to accept his invitation. Tiredness … _the sleek rope of raven hair that snaked dashingly along a masculine shoulder _… duty … _the warm smile whose corners hinted at wicked charm _… curiosity … _the sophisticated, meticulous way his glowing eyes studied her _...

Maybe it was all of those reasons. But they whooshed by as trivial afterthoughts because, for the few moments she let her mind become a blank slate, Riza wanted – needed – to not think twice, no, to not think _at all._ Gravity pulled her into a high-velocity freefall and she crossed the threshold.

The Crimson Alchemist moved aside to let the cadet pass. As she walked towards the table with her back at him, Kimblee noticed a fresh splotch of blood staining the lapel of his uniform.

"Fifth one this week," he mused offhandedly. "I suppose I should request Quartermaster field services to send me an adjutant specializing in laundry duty." Calmly, he shut the door with one hand and began unfastening his jacket with the other.

* * *

><p>Riza stood at attention next to the table watching the tall officer as he went to the very basic kitchen area and found an oil lamp. Removing its glass chimney, Kimblee put his hands together and transmuted a tiny, tightly controlled spark to ignite the wick, briefly filling the room with an electric blue haze. After that, he placed the lamp with its weak flame within a small stone cooking hearth to ensure the flat was still relatively blacked-out from outside the narrow window. The room now criss-crossed with long shadows, Riza respectfully lowered her gaze as the man nonchalantly shrugged off his unbuttoned uniform and proceeded to hold a portion of it under the faucet of the wash basin.<p>

Having washed off as much of the blood on his jacket, Kimblee turned and expressed surprise at seeing Riza remaining in her formal stance.

"At ease, soldier," he commanded with a chuckle, placing the jacket over his folded coat on a chair and sitting down. "Have a seat."

The sniper nodded once, dropped her pack on the floor and carefully laid her sheathed rifle on the table. She then self-consciously unclasped the fasteners on her wet cloak, slowly lifted it from her shoulders and tented it over the chair next to her.

"I must say, I find it very intriguing to encounter a woman like you in the military, even more so as a female sniper in this war. I would expect your type to be engaged in a more, shall we say, genteel profession."

As she took a seat, Riza couldn't help but notice how the tepid gold hue emanating from the lamp behind the alchemist cast a flattering gleam on the smoothly defined muscles of his bared arms, shoulders, and collarbones straining under the fabric of his shirt. Quickly, she averted her view to the rifle on the table as she straightened her posture opposite him. "My type ..." she began to craft a schooled response. "The likes of me choose to serve the country as required of their abilities, sir."

Kimblee propped an elbow on the table and cradled his chin in his hand. "And I presume your primary ability is sniping?"

"I'd like to believe the courses I excel in at the Academy are Military History and Defense and Counterinsurgency Analysis, but if the Army says so, then yes, Major; my specialization is sniping."

"And how do you like your job, so far?"

Momentary silence. Riza's fingers fussed over an imaginary loose thread on her rifle's bindings. She listened for a tinge of mockery in his voice and only heard genuine inquisitiveness. Surely, he already knew the answer from the look on her face the first time they met. He had even called her out on it. _What in the world is he playing at?_

Finally, she looked up and answered, "I think I do my job just fine, sir."

The officer smiled and nodded knowingly at the diplomatic reply. "I have no doubt about that. Tell me, how many Ishvalans do you surmise having sniped in this war?"

She scowled visibly at the blunt question, nails beginning to scratch obsessively at the wood veneer of the table. "Before your speech a few days ago, I hadn't really kept count. Definitely not as many as yo-" The woman bit her tongue abruptly. "... the State Alchemists."

"Ah ... Touché."

Riza cleared her throat in embarrassment. "Forgive me, sir. I wasn't trying to avoid the question by deflecting it on … anyone in particular."

"Nothing to forgive, my good soldier. Everyone, be it Amestrian or Ishvalan, knows by now State Alchemists and snipers have turned the tide of this conflict. And as State Alchemists, w_e_ - " Kimblee accented the word caustically for emphasis, "are fully aware of the lethal extent of using alchemy compared to conventional weaponry."

His expression perked with an aura that skillfully teetered between plain honesty and pride. "So, if you are insinuating that State Alchemists – like me – have killed more people than you ..."

"Of course, _we_ have."

He smiled.

Riza blinked at Kimblee's amused, unperturbed, and so _detached _reaction. Her scowl, meanwhile, deflated into a crestfallen stupor at her mention of _'State Alchemists'_ and his emphasis on _'we'_.

How could she forget that thousand-yard stare from those deep black eyes once so focused on dreams so near?

To her aghast realization, _'we'_ also meant _'him'_.

* * *

><p>"Out of all your targets, is there one that you remember in particular?" Kimblee's hands clasped beneath his chin in eager anticipation of her answer.<p>

"Why do you ask, Major?" Riza forced herself out of her reverie by adjusting upright on the chair.

"I admit it may be rather impossible for most soldiers to recall each of their kills in battle with precise detail. But surely at least one should stand out to make for an entertaining tale to share at a campfire, yes?" he explained. "What is yours?"

She stifled an exasperated sigh from escaping her lips, conceding that conversation with this eloquent man was expected of her the minute she walked through that door. What else were they supposed to do while waiting for the storm to pass after all?

"Um, I wouldn't know if this is up to campfire standards, but there was this incident a month ago in the south sector of Daliha," Riza began reluctantly. "Chelsea Company of the Second Battalion had been in a protracted door-to-door firefight with a large band of guerrillas and I was brought in to provide support. For three hours, I had been sniping from a bombed-out four-story granary until at about 1300 hours, the enemy had finally determined my position."

"An Ishvalan sharpshooter targeted me from a building opposite my outpost. At that point, we were at a standoff; neither of us sniped at the ground troops below. It was simply me against him and who could manage to pull off the killing shot on the other first."

"I would go down a floor, and he would track me, shooting into the granary windows and gaps every chance he got. Then I would do the same to him as soon as I detected movement in his building. This went on for several hours, each of us testing the other's patience in a battle of attrition. Strangely, we both never considered calling out for reinforcements to ambush the other's position even as we started running out of ammo and willpower."

"In the fourth hour of our deadlock, I was on my last rifle magazine and I knew I had to escape from the granary. It was then that I decided I would initiate a gambit. I fashioned a makeshift dummy out of my cloak and pack and positioned it and my rifle just a tiny bit visibly over one of the building parapets hoping the sniper would take the bait ..."

Riza paused, scanning Kimblee's body language for continued signs of interest. She knew she had a droll way about her and didn't think the alchemist would be particularly entranced with her dry delivery. But to her surprise, bright unblinking eyes alone confirmed his attentiveness.

"Continue, Miss Hawkeye," he egged on.

"In just a few minutes, the sniper shot at the dummy after which I dropped it in a manner of it falling over in a slump and pushed my rifle as naturally as possible out of the parapet."

"Anticipating that the sniper thought I was dead, I carefully crawled down the stairs to the main entrance of the building and hid behind the wall next to it armed with just my pistol. There, I waited for him – anyone, anything really – to come in. It had been almost two hours before someone finally checked in on the place to clear it. Framed by a fading sunset, it took just a second for us to stare at each other in instinctive recognition; another second to draw our guns ..."

Riza's hands knotted into fists, her nails scoring deep into calloused flesh.

"... and only a split-second for me to pull the trigger and shoot him between the eyes."

Kimblee whistled, his features softening from casual interest into one of admiration.

"It turns out both of us were down to our side arms. There we were, two snipers playing hide-and-seek all day, chasing each other through scopes and shooting our bullets into concrete, only for us to end up meeting at a doorway in a face-to-face duel."

The cadet drew in a deep, ragged breath and closed her eyes. Opening them, she confessed, "It was the longest day of my life – our lives. And yet, in retrospect, we had forgotten there was a bloody war happening outside, that all we did was play _a game _..."

"And you won."

She flinched.

"It's not that, sir." Riza shook her head, gaze volleying sideways and voice trailing off. Subtly, sweaty palms rubbed across her trousers back-and-forth. "His patience simply snapped before mine. Give or take some minutes, it could easily have been me heading out that door instead of him coming in. I ... It was just ... luck."

"You belittle your skill too much," Kimblee reproached lightly. "But indeed, that certainly is a memorable story."

"Whether or not I want it to be memorable, isn't that correct?"

"Only because you came out on top. But surely, you _liked_ the feeling that you came out alive, don't you?"

She glanced up, the horror and guilt of what she had done straining to show itself on her pretty face. But it was finally tamped down by a look of indifference and relief. "Of course, Major. I did not spend all of that time hiding and waiting just so I could die, sir."

He raised an amused eyebrow. She could swear the wide smile he flashed next almost seemed … charmed.

"You're a fast learner, Miss Hawkeye. I reckon this war will turn you into a _most excellent_ soldier soon enough."

* * *

><p>Riza shifted uncomfortably in her seat with boots scuffing the floor as she took in the promise and compliment with guarded reserve. The look Kimblee sent her way reminded her of the one he gave her in the town square, full of disdain and disappointment, not at her gender, but somehow of wasted potential. It was a look that penetrated far beyond her feminine façade and read into her psyche completely. Whereas other men – and women – regarded her as a good, dutiful soldier who just happened to be born with the wrong set of appendages for this war; this man appraised her as a warrior who had only to drop her moral barriers to blossom into a beautifully <em>perfect<em> _killer._

His appraisal of her scared her terribly ... yet, to her shame, flattered her at the same time.

"If I may ask, sir, what is your story, Major Kimblee? I have heard from the brass that the military was not your original career path."

He let the question sink for a while before bellowing a subdued laugh. He took the end of his tied-up black hair and bandied it about playfully. "Is that what they're saying about me? How very polite of them," he snorted. Letting the ponytail fall over his shoulder, he folded his hands together. "I may not look like it right now, but I truly was a product of the fine institution that is the Military Academy; one of its best, if I may say so myself, graduating with highest honors, Class of 1902."

"Rumor has it that it was actually you who demolished the old presidential palace to make way for the building of a new one, and that it was part of your State Alchemist certification final exam."

Kimblee leaned his back into the chair, chest puffing up slightly in pride. "One of the very few times His Excellency, Führer Bradley personally served as exam proctor. Well, it was his house, after all."

"He must've been quite impressed, sir."

"Oh, indeed he was," he boasted. "But more so because never before had alchemy been combined with quantum mechanics and applied sub-atomic theory. Never before was a form of alchemy designed _so perfectly_ for pure destruction and warfare." His grin upon mentioning this would go on for a mile if it could.

"But as things are wont to be, a military without a sustained armed conflict to unleash its energies on is practically useless. Border skirmishes and defensive line tactics do nothing to advance the progression of combat alchemy and other martial sciences, so I left soon after graduation to pursue … other interests."

Kimblee's expression turned nostalgic. Riza couldn't begin to fathom what scenes _'other interests'_ had stirred up in his mind.

"Of course, upon the eruption of this little soirée, I was called back on active duty as a State Alchemist, to which I dutifully obliged. Since then, well, let's just say the military and my alchemy have long since found how mutually beneficial they are to each other."

He leaned closer to her over the table as if to divulge a kept secret. "After all, it's a fallacy that an alchemist or a soldier can always choose his skill. Sometimes, the skill chooses you, am I not right, Miss Hawkeye?"

She hunched her shoulders without a direct reply, instead, training her gaze on the rifle that had been her only companion – and lifeline - for days and nights on end. Kimblee pitched forward inches more and purred lowly.

"I quite like you, young lady."

Her ears perked trying to isolate what had sounded like some sort of admission from the clattering cadence of the rain. She pulled back. Brown eyes went wide.

"Pardon, sir?"

"You are probably aware by now how we are trump cards in the same game, you and I, sniper and alchemist. Except, the way you play, you tend to apply concepts such as compassion when the rules clearly do not require them. Bending the rules to your liking complicates the game in ways that are more than necessary and puts your position - your life - at risk," Kimblee said as his hands grabbed the edge of the table and pushed off his chair away from it. Standing up, he began to outflank the divide that blocked him from her.

"I know you want to survive as much as the next soldier," the alchemist continued as he breached her corner. "I assume you have something or someone to live and fight for, do you not? Otherwise, why be a part of the game when you can easily watch from the sidelines?"

He glided himself between Riza and her side of the table, shoving aside the rifle with one hand to clear a space for him to sit. With him perched directly across and situating her close between his legs, the young sniper instinctively scooted her chair back.

"For country, for honor, for family, or for the heck of it; the reasons don't matter. We just do our part and make our way to the end of the game, preferably alive."

His flashing slivers of eyes pierced down Riza's petrified form. "I wonder, do you not want to play the game anymore now that it has reached fever pitch?"

Unable to endure the increasingly discomforting position she had been hedged into, Riza stood up abruptly in an attempt to take leave. But words and limbs failed to find the fortitude to act decisively and merely led her to sneak behind the useless protection of the chair.

"Major Kimblee, I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

He jumped down from the table and crept after her, ponytail swinging jauntily as he did. "It's troubling how far too many undergo a crisis of conviction at so late in the game and suddenly want to throw in the towel. Even _fine_ soldiers like you," the officer drawled out the word for emphasis, "aren't immune."

With no sign Kimblee was going to halt his beeline to her, Riza planted herself at attention. It was either that or retreat back into the dressing table behind her, or worse, the bed beside it. She conducted herself perfectly to the drill, holding on to it as she experienced a kind of fear she had never felt in her young, sheltered life. A fear mixed with an indeterminate heat and insouciance, it manifested in the twitchy flutterings of her gut, writhing with abandon to the pounding in her chest. So focused was this mutant fear on its dance, it cared not to compel her into pulling out the handgun on her hip and wave it in the man's direction.

Riza's iron gaze glassed over at the realization that the man coming for her was the physical incarnation of judgment in however form he would deal it. But to her utter shock and surprise, her fear had not been solely reserved for the alchemist all along, but was also directed at herself. Fear her soul would willfully allow her mind and body to be passed judgment and be dealt all its consequent punishments. Fear she would willingly give in and give up to this war.

Fear she would surrender. Totally. Unconditionally.

With that trailing thought, Riza awaited the officer's – _terms_.

"Have you been getting enough sleep?" Kimblee inquired pointedly, the fabric of his trousers scraping against hers as he closely scrutinized the faint umbra under her eyes. "Are the noises keeping you awake?" He deliberately did not specify whether the noises were of the external or internal kind.

Riza swallowed hard, body already starting to numb itself to his proximity. But to her chagrin, she could not still the warm tint darkening her cheeks from joining the tired shadows of her eyes.

"How loud are the screams filling your head? Do they rattle your bones so much that they make your whole body ache?" Kimblee's arm snaked behind the small of Riza's back and made short work of unlatching the harness of the gun holster around her waist. Taking the newly freed weapon with his other hand, he briefly showed it off to her face before tossing it aside on the table behind him.

"I hope it never occurred to you to silence the screams yourself."

She blinked and shook her head briskly.

"Good. I knew whatever resolve you have remaining in this battlefield is too strong for that. Although ..." His composed countenance suddenly reflected bliss. "Really, if you arrange the sounds of battle into a symphony, the results can be absolutely melodious."

Without a warning, Kimblee lunged and hooked his right arm firmly around a surprised Riza's waist and took her right hand with his left, whirling her into a close position stance of a waltz.

"Major Kimblee, sir! What are you doing?"

Keeping the cadet molded to him and clutching her hand away from their forms, the Crimson Alchemist bowed his head to graze the short blonde strands above her left ear with his smirk. "The music can even be good enough in which to dance."

Riza could only gape at Kimblee's embrace, feeling unable to stop from sinking deeper into his world of sublime pathos and madness. She was already aware of being hopelessly tangled in his lines of rhetoric and in the weave alternating his mockery of her motivations with the stroking of her ego.

And at that moment he pulled her in to dance, she knew her fear had been realized.

"Permission to speak, sir."

"Mmh," he hummed while performing a chassé and then dipping Riza low. He then yanked her up close and released his hold as easily as though what he just did was part of normal military formation. "Permission granted."

Light-headed from the sways she was put through, Riza struggled to pillar her posture and stand in the stance of formally addressing a superior officer. "About that lecture you delivered the other day, Major. Please do not mistake me for not having understood your points. I admit, I find myself agreeing with your observations completely, particularly in regard to how I've been hypocritical in my expectations of this war. But - " She paused for a beat as her honest gaze locked onto his.

"I apologize, if yes, I do not willingly want to be here. But, no, contrary to what you said, sir, I _do want_ to forget the people I've killed. I want to forget the blood, the corpses lining the streets, the screams. I want … no, I _need_ to ..."

The female soldier stopped mid-sentence, her head dropping in capitulation as the vicissitudes of her courage depleted into mere stirrings of foolishness.

With head cocked to the side in moderate interest, Kimblee contemplated her declaration for a few seconds before following through with a low, dulcet:

"Is that all?"

"I think there will be no end to what I feel about this war." She shook her head weakly, mind too weary to dispute the wisdom of confessing to a man who would never have anything for which to confess; a man who wore the calculatedly fabricated layers of his mask so complexly she didn't know who of his personas she would meet next.

Kimblee re-closed the gap between them, though less flippantly than his previous contact. "Miss Hawkeye, you may want or need to, but you will never be able to erase what you did – what you're going to do – completely from your memory. You may try to bury them in the deepest recesses of your mind, but they have a nasty tendency to remind you they're still there, cropping up even in the most random of moments. Where someone sees a glass of red wine, you'll see blood. Where others look at people through rose-colored glasses, you'll look at them through cross-hairs."

"I can catalog all of my encounters and their every detail so that they never have to annoy me at a whim. But I am an exception. I suppose that's not an option _you _have."

Riza inhaled sharply as the Crimson Alchemist reached out his hands to her, giving her a close-up view of the intricate interplay of celestial runes, hexagrams, and alchemical symbols inked in indigo. In such a compact sphere, she saw action and reaction, sun and moon, gold and silver, air and water, yin and yang, male and female … She was awed by such beauty and devastation in their simplicity, and when those same hands rested on her collar in near encirclement of her breath-starved throat, she could feel the exquisitely restrained energy buzzing between them, each daring the other to complete the circle.

"You say you don't want to be here and that you want to forget. But, Miss Hawkeye, there is but one absolute escape and it is, unfortunately, a permanent one. I'm afraid only you can help yourself on that front." Kimblee's finger tilted up her chin. "I, for one, certainly do not wish for your demise under such insignificant reasons."

Throwing her head back, she shot him a dagger look – in parts suspicious, but also provocative.

Kimblee tamed a snicker that hissed up his diaphragm. "However, even if I did say something about not forgetting, I don't recall mentioning anything unacceptable about forgetting your misery _temporarily_ ..."

"_That _… is something I may be able to help you with."

Suspicion turned into incredulity in an instant and Riza shrunk back only to be blocked by the bulk of the dressing table behind her. "Sir, please, I don't know exactly what you are implying, but if it's what I think it is, may I remind you of the Amestrian Army's policy on non-fraternization between senior and junior officers under Sec - "

He cut her off with a finger to her lips. "Non-fraternization, eh? Interesting. I was expecting you'd charge me with harassment."

She jerked her head away with a sneer. His closeness had forced her to incline into the dresser so that she was half-sitting on it.

"But non-fraternization? Please, I'm a State Alchemist. This military title is a mere triviality which I don't much care about. When it comes to our basic job descriptions, Miss Sniper ..."

"We're _equals_."

"I think the army would strongly disagree with you, sir," Riza mumbled into her shoulder.

"The military disagrees with me on many things – except on the one thing that matters most." Kimblee glanced furtively on the sniper's side arm on the table. Deftly, he swiveled to the table and in a few quick steps, unfastened the handgun from its holster, disengaged the thumb safety, took her right hand, and curled her fingers around its grip.

"If _you_ disagree, then you're justifiably within your rights to defend yourself from my supposed assault." The golden fire in his eyes was radiant yet stern; his face, cold and unflinching. "But ... I can't guarantee I won't attempt some sort of defensive effort as well …"

"I like winning the game, too, you know."

For almost a whole minute, she held the loaded gun to her shoulder, refusing to meet the alchemist's stare down. With her chest rising and falling so heavily that with each breath she grazed his white shirt, Riza finally pressed on the safety, lowered her arm, and dropped the weapon loudly onto the dresser.

"Whatever it is you are suggesting, sir, that … that's not what I need," she stammered, the line separating truth from lie blurring with each successive word she uttered.

He cupped her chin, moving it so she faced him squarely. "Why are we here, Miss Hawkeye?"

"Waiting … waiting for the weather to clear, sir."

"Why are we _really_ here, Miss Hawkeye?" he smirked, ignoring the answer to his rhetorical question. "Who are we but two soldiers huddling under a barrage of rain and bullets and blood? Who are we but two pawns in a war of extermination where past and future don't exist and the only law governing this forsaken land allows us to do anything necessary to make it through to another day?"

"Who are we but a man and a woman sharing a foxhole where there is but one rule – to survive?"

Kimblee closed in so that his next formed words feathered against Riza's lips _sotto voce_.

"Tell me honestly, isn't that why you're here? Isn't this what you want … to escape from the chaos for just one moment?"

A soft roll of thunder echoed the drumming of Riza's heart as the overwhelming sweep of adrenaline cascaded down her body. The sensation hovered excruciatingly between nausea, and to her horror, lust. That even though she was terribly frightened, she wondered how his eloquent tongue would taste like, what his deadly hands would feel like touching her under the heavy layers of her wool uniform. Her mind now an empty husk of memories stolen by the victims of her gun, she forced herself to swallow a lump of all the unsaid words of protest and anger toward Kimblee down her throat.

All words, that is, except one as her mouth responded against his with the delicacy of gossamer. Their lips tasted of storm and submission.

"_Yes."_

* * *

><p><em>(to be continued)<em>


	3. Act III: Penance & Punishment

A/N: Standard disclaimers apply. WARNING: Chapter rated for mature psychosexual themes, including slight non-con. Turn back if such scenes discomfort you. As for the chapter titles, they are in no way intended to connote any semblance to actual religious rituals. Your comments are welcome and appreciated. Thanks for reading!

Oh, and thank you, **DeathsLittleBirdie** for the breathing lessons. :)

* * *

><p>Act III: Penance &amp; Punishment<p>

* * *

><p><em>Steel<em>. That was what he imagined she was made of under those liquid yet defiant eyes and slightly parted lips holding back curses and secrets and unimaginable yearnings. Tempered steel that was strong and stainless in its exterior but tainted with minute impurities within, making it pliable … brittle.

He could already feel it corroding under her flammable layers.

Funny how alchemy didn't even have anything to do with it.

* * *

><p>The soft, quivering friction of the woman's mouth persuaded Kimblee to reply with a brush of his smile, a mere breath away from a kiss, but he stopped just short of sealing this awaited opening with something much deeper. He quite liked this delightful little cage he had cornered her in, its loose confines giving her every opportunity to struggle and lash out for a chance to escape, yet alluring in the way it forced her to recline into the dresser's narrow surface and the wall behind it.<p>

The alchemist's hand busily rode up her thigh, reaching under and hitching its toned length against his hip. The stirrings below it made very clear to her what he had expected to receive from this bargain. As she involuntarily slid slightly forward, her palm listlessly rebuffed his shoulder only for his other hand to effortlessly wrest control over it. His attentions turned to that stubborn sniping hand, understanding how it was now the only thing about her putting up any semblance of a fight. As she stared transfixed, he wordlessly brought it close to his face; first with his aquiline nose tickling at her wrist, breathing in its intoxicating perfume of cordite and the mild cinnamon-coffee scent imparted by the walnut stock of her rifle. Then, as his lips grazed the heavy tapping of her pulse, he gave in to the temptation to close his mouth over the wrist and tame it with soft rolling strokes of his tongue. A prelude to what was to come.

With a jolt, Riza violently yanked herself away from the torrid kiss, a strangled whimper echoing in her throat.

Kimblee gave out a pleased hum. He considered himself a deliberate, patient man and knew he had all the time to seal – and consummate – their deal. Over and over again. The inconvenient trappings of this war had persisted far too long for his liking and he would damn well not waste this rare offer.

He pulled back and, as he did, traced his fingertips across the line of the woman's jaw, past her chin, and down the hollow of a pale neck peeking above a stiff uniform collar. A small tingle coursed through his spine upon dipping into a tiny bead of sweat that had pooled there and it took an ounce more of restraint than he usually practiced in order not to simply grab her lapel, tear the top off her heaving chest and drink in the essence of her fear and guilt.

But the young cadet interrupted any rash reveries Kimblee could act on by raising the back of one hand to block any further incursion of his fingers. They swapped pregnant looks – his, of amusement, hers imploring – and a flicker of understanding passed between them.

This was all about _her _choice. He had no qualms allowing this small concession of control. After all, it would be the last she would yield before the actual act of contrition and she was certainly in no position to demand anything from the confessor.

_Besides_, Kimblee thought as he pulled a chair and straddled it, folding his arms languidly on top of the chair back; he much preferred this front row seat to the show anyway.

The Crimson Alchemist sighed and closed his eyes mirthfully. Again, he reminded himself how truly fortunate he was to be able to enjoy the most fulfilling job in the world.

* * *

><p>Grateful the alchemist had given her space yet livid at the fact he intended to watch, Riza slowly and cautiously undressed. She tried as much as she could to steel her hands once so steady with a trigger, but they were both like jelly now as they loosened brass buttons, untied boot laces and unnotched buckles. And as she started to drop the shields of her rank one-by-one into a blue puddle around her feet, Riza stole nimble glances at her watcher from under the fringe of her hair. His gaze was not that of a ravenous leer, but rather one of calm, clinical interest in each individual stage of her exposure.<p>

A small, prideful part of her wondered if Kimblee thought of her undressing as ungraceful or, worse, disappointing. But it was likely he was more interested in reading and evaluating the subtleties of her movements than in the revealing of her body; if she was just a study in action/reaction and if he was simply mentally calculating her responsiveness to stimuli he had planned for her.

Riza bit the bottom of her lip nervously as she dizzily pulled off her black shirt over her head, leaving her clad in only a pristine white corseted camisole and bloomers. Could he really predict her reactions when she herself hadn't much of a clue to her own? She had experienced one or two flings at the academy; however, they were nothing but brash young men – boys, really – with who she fumbled awkwardly and quickly in the dark and who left her staring blankly at ceilings waiting for merciful ends.

The one watching her now was undeniably a man – State Alchemist, late-20s, worldly, highly intelligent … dangerous. She would be like glass in the palms of his hands and – after knowing all her sins as she had laid them out for him – he would no doubt make sure he saw, heard, and felt each step of her penance.

As she collected her clothes into a neat pile on the dressing table, Riza realized what a stupid choice it was to submit to the whims of such an unpredictable man. But she decided stupidity was part of her atonement. She was here, after all, for punishment, not pleasure. However the night wore on, she knew she would feel all the more awful for the experience afterwards.

She paused for a beat. Still, she saw no harm in taking a little extra precaution and reached over to place her cocked pistol on the dresser edge nearest the bed.

The act drew a hearty laugh from Kimblee.

Riza acknowledged with neither a flinch nor a sound, but merely by throwing off the bedcovers and sitting down on the edge of the bed to the groan of soft creaking from its coils. Slowly, she hoisted her legs onto the mattress and lay down. A faint scent of orange blossoms wafted into her nose as her head hit the pillows and, for very brief seconds, she felt nostalgic for the time she last slept in a normal bed, sprawling languorously on freshly laundered sheets, body unconstrained by starchy, scratchy uniforms and bulky steel-capped combat boots. Was it months ago? Weeks? She couldn't remember, but it felt like an eternity.

The scrape of his chair broke her fragrant rhapsodies. Riza closed her eyes tightly and balled anguished hands into the linens as she listened intently to the subsequent clink of metal and rough rustle of cloth. She was deluded. She knew there would be no sleeping on this bed. Moreover, a bitter pang of guilt pierced her heart for entertaining such fanciful thoughts of her own bed when the owners of this one were likely to never return to its warmth and safety.

And the final insult – that two of the Ishval War's most prolific killers would soon defile its happy, intimate memories with the stains of their blasphemy.

Riza buried her face into the pillow hoping the pressure would stem the tide of tears that welled from her wounded soul. So consumed was she with hiding that she hardly felt the man climb in from the foot of the bed.

As though Kimblee had read her mind, he mirrored her whimsies. "How I missed the feel of a proper bed. More so one that has a beautiful woman in it."

She bit her lip hard to quell noises of dissent.

He wasted no time as his large hands leisurely coasted up the length of her legs, lovingly like a sculptor putting the finishing touches to a marble statue. She sucked in a sharp breath, shocked at how soft and smooth those hands were as their warmth soaked up the cold of her skin – hands that were such terrible tools of graphic destruction.

The alchemist clambered over until he hovered on top, forcing Riza to face him out of resignation and curiosity. Her round eyes blinked even wider as she took in the full extent of his nakedness. For reasons she could not fathom, she scanned for physical pathological signs on him as a manner of explaining away his enigma … and found none.

"What, were you expecting a carnival freak or the horrific scars of some sort of hard life?" Kimblee laughed, having caught on to her scrutiny. "I assure you, my perfectly normal upper-middle-class upbringing offered me nothing of the kind, unfortunately."

She swore she picked up a barely perceptible barb to his last word.

"But enough about me." Knees straddling her hips and arms latching on to the curves of her waist, he lifted her away from the refuge of the pillow and into the solid plane of his torso where she couldn't help but become drunk on his clean, homely scent of soap and shave tonic.

He, in turn, leaned in to inhale the perfume of hair where it met the nape of her neck. "Hmm … notes of bergamot, vanilla, rain, and gunpowder," he purred with much satisfaction. "I'm glad war hasn't been an excuse for you not to take care of yourself."

"I've been fortunate. These past few weeks, only a handful of us have had the women's garrison all to ourselves," she explained, deciding not to elaborate on the obvious reasons why. She suddenly felt sheepish from the mere mention of the word 'fortunate'.

"You hardly smell of war at all. Your reward for staying alive perhaps." The man shrunk away from her neck. Adjusting his vision to the pale yellow glow and long shadows of the room, he moved his attentions to her front where he briefly admired the dainty ribbon edging of her silk ivory camisole.

"And certainly, these aren't military issue, are they?" he asked with a throaty chuckle as he deftly undid the shirt's mother-of-pearl buttons between his thumb and index finger.

Riza fluttered her lashes over heavy-lidded downcast eyes, rendered speechless at Kimblee's mockery of her vanity.

"I do love a woman who dolls herself up even in times of strife, though. And you, my dear, doll up nicely."

She tried to ignore how his thumb dallied suggestively on the third round button of her shirt before popping it open. "I guess I merely want to leave a presentable corpse, sir," she deadpanned. Nevertheless, her sarcasm was peppered with grains of truth.

"Oh? Aren't you afraid someone might be tempted to defile such a lovely sight?"

Riza scrunched up her pert nose. "Ishvalans are not known to do such things."

"Who said anything about Ishvalans?" Kimblee chortled. His middle finger dipped into the valley of her bosom newly laid bare. She quivered above the corset stays scarcely holding it up.

"Well, it's good to hold on to vestiges of civility in the middle of battle. They're reminders of what's waiting for you once you've accomplished your job." He loosened one last button, letting the flimsy panels of the garment fall away to reveal the gentle slope of her full breasts. The expression on his face, previously one of inquisitive nonchalance, now hinted at libidinous desire.

"Frankly, I'm less interested in waiting for outcomes and more into enjoying the spoils," the alchemist mouthed huskily into Riza's ear before his fingers wrapped around the back of her head, tilting it upwards to expose her neck to his lips.

She propped on her arms behind her, fists clawed into the linens, eyes blinking at the silhouettes swallowing each other on the ceiling as he laid a path of moist, suckling kisses down her arching throat. _Waiting … What's waiting for me? Who … what am I waiting for?_ The questions swirled in her thoughts, the disciplined synchrony between her body and mind disconnecting as she submitted to the stimulating nuances of Kimblee's touch.

Travelling downwards, he started paying homage to a sizeable purple contusion on her right shoulder made by the repeated recoils of her sniper rifle. It stood out dark and ugly, yet proud, against the peach-tinted cream of her complexion.

"This must hurt quite a bit, no?" Lips pressed on the bruise.

"It's … It's a small price to pay for what I've done," came the breathy reply. _Too small_.

"Tsk. Such a mark of honor shouldn't have caused you any pain. I guess I have my work cut out for me then." Kimblee's hand that bore the silver moon curved around the underside of a breast where his open smile drifted down from her bruised shoulder and closed over its rosy peak.

Riza let out a high-pitched gasp as she let his weight guide her back down into the mattress. With her arms stretched out to her sides and hands distractedly creasing the sheets, she unfurled a soft, pale canvas for his complete ministration. Where chaste grazes of his lips passed, blazing open-mouthed kisses followed. Where teeth had lightly nipped, a clever tongue would lick it better. He mapped and he memorized – as if touch and taste were the only ways to paint her in his mind.

His skill was nothing like Riza had ever experienced or even imagined as described by books or by her jaded best friend Rebecca – and this was merely foreplay. Yet even as he masterfully plucked at her bouquet of nerves, making them blossom uncontrollably one-by-one, the rational part of her mind rebelled aimlessly, not in forgetfulness like Kimblee was coaxing her to, but ironically, in reminiscence … reminiscence of the only other time she had allowed herself to be half-naked in front of a man fully exposed to her vulnerabilities and grief.

She remembered how she had her back to him the entire time, their eyes never once meeting. But oh, how she _saw_ him, felt him, all of him – his bright, eager round face; his dark, determined eyes burning in studied concentration on the alchemic formulas, and his cheeks blushing as he tried so hard not to trace the symbols with his fingertips. Even then, she could envision his idealistic dreams for Amestris ... recite his carefully plotted life and the people he would have with him. Even then, his future as Fuhrer of the country was as clear and brilliant as the fire he would use to light every citizen's way.

For a split-second, she imagined it was that young man taking her and absolving her of her sins. Riza gritted her teeth and violently shook the thought from her head. Yes, they had made the same optimistic choices; yes, she followed down his long, hard road, but their paths had diverged some time since the start of this final phase of the war and he now had his own demons he had to battle, and so did she.

_No. Wrong._ She knew she had it reversed. It was _she_ who had opened that path for him. She and her cursed back that was the lure. His moth to her flame.

She was responsible. She was to blame.

Riza decided she was not about to tarnish his face and name and memory on any regret she – and only she alone – would carry. She would spare him that, and more, if she could.

And yet …

_Why does it have to be this way? _When she met him again on that corpse-strewn hill, his eyes had been lifeless and cold; from his fiery altruism he had made columns of fire out of the very people he wanted to protect. _How did it come to this? _Riza turned her head away and blinked out tears that began to stream down her face. She quickly threw her right forearm across her eyes to hide the cries. How did she end up killing hundreds of people and seeing the only man she trusted so vanquished? What cruel fate led her to fight in a strange land, to lie in a stranger's bed, to be seduced by the strangest of men?

_This … everything … is a mistake._

Kimblee felt her already taut abdominal muscles contract under his tongue which trailed a lingering line from her breasts to her navel. He frowned against the cold skin and stopped midway through untying the drawstring of her bloomers.

"Having second thoughts?" His query was made in jest, but the last word dripped acid.

When Riza replied with only a dampened sniffle and a slight jerk of her limbs, the major cleaved a path up towards her by prying her knees apart and sliding the length of his lithe sculpted body against hers, making her feel as if she was being restrained by a smooth stalk of pale, pliant bamboo. Below, in contrast, the thin barrier of silk covering her quim held back the brusque hard heat attempting to rip through its threads. One hand grabbed at the arm that covered her face and pinned its wrist on the pillow above her head, while the other took her chin to face him.

"Ho-oh … What's this?"

"Nothing, sir," she trebled while reaching to wipe her tears with a free hand only for it to be held fast to her side.

Brows knitted fiercely over Kimblee's flashing amber gaze. "Why do you cry? If you want an escape, let your mind go. By all means, imagine someone else on top of you. Call out his name if you like. A former lover? A professor at the academy? Perhaps the young Flame Alchemist who shares the same kind of misery you do?"

Her lips pursed into a trembling pout.

With a knowing sneer twisting on his lips, he brought both of Riza's hands above her head and touched his forehead to hers as he continued, "Otherwise, do not avert your eyes from the choice you made."

Kimblee pulled back in time to catch the surprise in her watery brown depths. He countered her expression with a razor glint of his eyes that found her tears amusing. He then let go of her wrists and impetuously drew her into an embrace with one arm while the other trussed beside her head. "You should see yourself, Miss Hawkeye. You truly are a thing of beauty and brutal perfection in this desert. But those tears are wasted on something so insignificant as the past ... wasted on those you've already killed who won't care you shed them after the fact."

He shook his head. "Pity. And this after you've been responding so nicely."

Riza looked at the officer like he ordered. With pragmatic acquiescence, she wrapped the portrait of her hopes in a heavy mantle of velvet, hid him in the silver-lined lockbox of her unrealized dreams and thought not of his face or name. This she did to confront the picture of her despair, laid bare and free to consummate her nightmares.

_Solf J. Kimblee_, the name of madness itself, yet so easy to succumb to in everything from his malevolent attractiveness to his godless brilliance and his honeyed, graceful speech.

How hard and low she let herself fall.

The cadet's eyes bled out the last of her tears and went wide in a glassy stare. "Major Kimblee, my apologies. I do not intend to turn away from this … from you." A shaking hand smoothed over the rippled contours of his shoulder and reached out across his neck where her fingers laced into the tight bind of his hair. Finding the tie holding it back, she tugged it down and watched the strands spill wildly around and over them like rivers of onyx curtaining their faces in darkness. Riza's breath held for a second at how magnificently feral he looked, making her realize how she was not only going to be taken by a moral beast but a physical one as well.

A low growl rumbled in the man's larynx with his appreciation for her act also manifesting firmly against her thighs. Two of Kimblee's fingers swiped away the tears on both her cheeks. "Good, now let's wipe those tears and start thinking pleasant thoughts, shall we?" His words were silken with comfort but promised nothing but obliterating forgetfulness. He took the same two fingers and sucked the salty liquid from them. His hand then descended beneath the loosened band of her silk drawers and detoured wetly across sensitive petals and folds of skin before burrowing between the warm pillows of flesh into her opening.

Riza winced and gave out a shrill whimper as Kimblee pushed past her unyielding entrance. One of her hands gripped a fistful of sheet while the other clawed nails into his back as he probed the depths and shallows of her core. His lips, meanwhile, started their own assault above, purpling the pale skin of her neck up to where it met her chin where the fervor of his kiss snapped her head back. He then sealed his kiss by planting his mouth over hers where, to her annoyance, the assailing contact caused her teeth to cut into her bottom lip and draw blood. She felt a chuckle echo into her mouth as his tongue prowled, lapped thirstily at the bleeding, and then chased after her stubbornly elusive one.

Briefly, her body struggled out of sheer necessity. Her strength tested against his. But a thick, feverish soup of delirium flooded the young woman's head and began to inundate the last vestiges of her resistance. Sooner than she expected, her lips and tongue answered coyly to Kimblee's explorations where she sampled hints of spice and fine cognac on his palate … legs parted slightly to ease his passage – and her pain … pelvis swayed tentatively to the sensuous sliding of his hand.

"There. This isn't so bad, is it?" he crooned hoarsely against her swollen lips, briefly breaking his kiss. His thumb started caressing the hooded crest of her flesh in rhythm with his plunging strokes. "The best kind of pleasure is that which is born from pain, wouldn't you say so?"

"I don't … I'm not sure … ah ..." she gasped out a paltry reply before a crushing mouth muzzled her again.

As Riza's arms finally slung around his neck and a leg hitched against his hip summoning his insistence deeper into her submission; it occurred to her that his discipline would be dealt not in blood, or bruises, or raw pain, but in absolute pleasure – or more precisely, shame at feeling, wanting it in the middle of atonement.

It suddenly became all too simple. Tonight, she would become this man's whore, and her payment, this punishment.

* * *

><p>Had he been a man of limited composure, Kimblee knew at the point the blonde cadet's thighs opened beneath him in timid welcome he could have barged and poured his savage release into her. But no, that would be the exact kind of infliction she would expect from an officer of his … reputation and proclivities. That method of punishment was much too mundane and effortless for the likes of her and her scrambled moral code. It would be easy for Officer Cadet Riza Hawkeye to attribute the raw seduction to his supposed cruelty; make it easy for her to recant all responsibility for her chosen actions simply because he was in an official position of authority over her.<p>

Frankly, he couldn't understand why people had to make the act of choosing so complicated and difficult for themselves; why a fellow soldier with accountability equal to his own should be excused for deflecting her shame on someone like him simply because he conveniently had none of that to express.

Well, he thought he was certainly qualified to show her the fine line between choice and consequence and the river of hypocrisy that flowed between them. Indeed, as he delightedly felt the woman's hypocrisy enveloping his fingers, he would make sure every single kiss and moan and spasm was delivered on her own accord. He would enjoy the viscous entanglement of their bodies, taking sumptuous pleasure in gradually emptying her mind of reason and quickly overloading it with buzzing, flashing sensations. He would toy torturously with the precarious balance of her punishment - leave a bruise, salve it with a caress. Thrust roughly, then tease with a lingering withdrawal. Make her bleed, and then wash it away with the liquids of her lust.

If she was perceptive enough, she might even catch a glimpse of how it was to see things his way.

Kimblee broke contact with Riza's near and nether regions to watch her balance at play. As her tear-stained face contorted beautifully, he could taste pain and pleasure in the faint coppery tanged sweetness on his fingers; kissing her again so she could savor on his tongue how he'd both hurt and aroused her. Lifting himself off just enough for the stormy air to waft around their sweat sheened skin in a delicious chill, Kimblee slid down the length of her shivering form, slipping the silk off her hips as he did. The ends of his mouth curled up when she feebly kicked the garment away when it gathered around her heels and he rewarded her assist by kneeling before her, hoisting one leg over his shoulder and dotting kisses on it starting from her ankle.

Riza craned her head slightly forward, gaze wide with bewilderment under the mess of her bangs with breaths coming in short, rapid open-mouthed puffs in nervous anticipation of where those kisses would end. Kimblee's almost lupine eyes – deep pools the color of honey flecked with gold mischief and binding spells – honed into hers, never releasing them as lips traveled upwards. From the way her body seized up, he could tell she had never experienced what he was planning to do to her. The alchemist could almost laugh at the revelation; how this exquisite prize he caught - a ruthless killer as she was - could also be so emotionally, morally, and now, even physically – virginal.

He lazily traced his tongue along the juncture of the girl's thigh and belly, back and forth, getting close to her center then pulling up, taking his idle time. If it was punishment she was after, he was more than willing to make her suffer. If she wanted a moment to forget, he knew himself most capable of erasing her thoughts and filling her mind with fleeting insanity.

Trussing on elbows, she tried to scoot away from his wicked teasing, but powerful hands locked her hips firmly against the mattress. The more his huffing mingled with her moist heat, the more her thighs scissored to cool the swelter. And when Riza finally dropped her head into the pillows and audibly held her breath, Kimblee gently spread her legs apart and lowered his head between them.

He would melt her into a powerless, massless puddle of burning, creamy flesh and loose limbs. He would dive headlong into it, bathe in it, drink it all in. Nothing would sound and taste better than a perfectly orchestrated deconstruction. And despite the things he told her, he didn't know if the young soldier would still allow herself to one day forget the things she had done in this war, but, smugly, he knew she would always, always remember him … remember this.

* * *

><p>Riza arched her back and exhaled a long drawn-out sigh. She lost all concept of time, its passage a thick haze swirling together with the inky emptiness in her fevered head and which was sporadically interrupted by sparks of brilliant white light behind closed eyes. What little coherent thought she could string along cursed the traitorous, greedy body. Exactly how long had it been since it opened up completely in lewd submission to his digits, lips, and tongue circling and darting in sublime tandem? Since when had she started thrashing her head from side to side and had hands weaving and tangling their fingers in the silk of his hair? In the din of the loud buzzing of her head, could she actually hear soft mewls resonating sensuously from her throat?<p>

The woman's legs told her the minutes must have been long, aching where they had been splayed and suspended, aches that were in contrast to the syrupy sensations frothing between them. She dared not open her eyes to the sight of her body's shamelessness; it was enough just to feel herself writhing under his tactile assaults. Even the man's long raven locks were not spared in toying with her, webbing damply across her thighs like so many climbing tendrils eagerly and jealously attempting to mimic the glib, serpentine tongue that had laid full claim to her slick core. She tried to concentrate on her pleasure, on her completion; otherwise, it seemed he would go on endlessly until she fell. She knew she couldn't take more of the extended shame.

_Oh god ..._ if it was only possible to drown in this forever.

Mercifully, Riza sensed her ordeal building up to an explosive climax as her nerve endings seemingly began to converge at the base of her spine. Her breathing shallowed and toes curled against her seducer's sides as fingertips raked into his scalp. With a yelp, she was soon overcome with shudders and he sent her over the edge again and again, going on for the length of his choosing before he subdued her - like a whisperer to a wild filly ... stroking, reining, taming ... until he finally released her from his hold.

She instinctively clamped her knees together to tide the flow of her arousal and slowly fluttered eyes open to see Kimblee at her side licking the glisten off his lips and looking very pleased. He mouthed a vague compliment she couldn't quite catch over the clap of thunder outside when – not even allowing her to catch breaths or senses about her – his strong arms carried and shifted her into a kneeling position facing the wall against the side of the bed.

Riza gave a small cry of protest. Like a newly born foal, she tried to steady the post-orgasmic wobble in her legs as he zealously peeled off the gauzy camisole that still covered her back. She tried to resist by turning and grappling at the alchemist, but he merely squared her shoulders forward, roughly pulled down on the fabric and cuffed her wrists until the silk bunched around them. The tattooed frescoes lay bare and striking to his sight.

He hummed wondrously. She froze as her world crumbled.

"Well, well. I didn't expect to see this literally in the flesh."

"Please, sir. Don't ..." Riza demurred weakly into the wall, unable to say more, aware of its futility.

Even in the dingy orange-tinted milky moonlight washing over their kneeling forms, Riza could almost feel the man's sharp stare etch hotly on her back, raptly studying its sepia-inked glyphs, animistic sigils and alchemic cuneiforms. She had regained a fraction of rationality in the way it mortified her how it was possible he could decipher the keys to unlocking the complete manifestation of flame alchemy. All because of her carelessness.

As if sensing the cadet's trepidation, Kimblee waned his attention on her tattoos and roped her into a spooning embrace, molding her generously curving backside to his rigid front. A low laugh rumbled from his chest.

"Do you want to hear a story?" he asked rhetorically, resting his chin on her shoulder, a stray hand creeping to fondle a breast.

Riza sagged dejectedly into his lap, afraid of what lessons he had for her now.

"Many years ago, a young man who had spent his whole childhood in the study of alchemy and all its applications suddenly found it wanting of _something_ as soon as he hit a certain age of reason. Alchemy, as it was being practiced, was all about practicality, harmony, order ... and its perfection measured against such."

"The young man wondered if perfection could also be found in chaos and, if under such unpredictable parameters, such alchemy could challenge the rules of equivalent exchange. And so, realizing this, he set off to search for the most beautiful, primordial kind of alchemy, one whose transmutations can be appreciated simply for its own sake and not on its perceived benefits to society. The kind that arouses all senses and with a scale that can evoke the whole spectrum of emotions – from euphoria to despair."

"His search took him to all corners of Amestris until one day, he found himself in East City, standing before the decrepit estate of a master whose renown for an alchemy of such violent splendor was only whispered about. But the alchemist looked nothing like the magnificent portrait that preceded his genius and reputation. His face was cursed by deep lines of regret; his eyes, chasms of death itself. And behind him was a meek girl of about ten, preparing tea in the kitchen, her grave prettiness suffocating and withering under the alchemist's diseased miasma."

"Unfazed, the young man tipped his hat and politely introduced himself and his goals. He was only too willing to relieve the master of his alchemic burden if he could have the honor of learning it from him."

Kimblee paused as he idly mapped the runic activation formulas on Riza's skin with his fingertips. "The master looked at the eager student straight in the eye and said, _'Flame can only be handled by one of equal temperament. One whose soul has little fire will not be able to control the flame. But one who has too much, however, will have flame eventually controlling him._'"

"The flame master then continued to tell the young man,_ 'Unfortunately, I can see much brilliance in you, but your soul burns with a fire that rivals that of hell. If I taught you this alchemy, neither would you control flame nor would the flame control you …'_

'... it will _become_ you.'"

Kimblee's voice suddenly took on a nostalgic tone. "Strangely, the young man had not been offended. In fact, everything became clear as day. It had taken him many months and many journeys in his search for the perfect alchemy, but with just those few words from the alchemist, he finally understood where and how he would find it. Satisfied, the man said his thanks and bid the master a good day. But before leaving, he posed one last question ..."

"_'Your daughter … she is deemed gifted enough to carry on the flame for you is she not? '"_

Kimblee's hand caressed the side of Riza's face. "Would you like to guess what his answer was?"

She fixed round eyes at the rough, ashen masonry in front of her, knowing full well the dénouement of the story.

"Nothing. The old man simply replied with a disappointed, glazed look and a slam of the door."

The Crimson Alchemist pushed away and held the woman at arm's length, bending down to where the tattoos ended at the small of her back. His lips feathered against their patterns. "It turns out that flame alchemy really didn't meet the man's needs after all. It is visually gorgeous yet too quiet. Terrifying yet too slow. The aftermath drab in its monochrome ..." Kimblee said in between passes of his fluid tongue painting over the twin basilisks that spiraled around Riza's tingling spine. Her palms raised and pressed against the wall to brace against the tremors where rapture and anguish dueled for dominance over control of her motions.

"Happily, not long after that encounter, he ended up with an alchemy that suited him perfectly. It was instant in its gratification, artful in the vivid colors and textures it produced and – most importantly – the sounds … such a magnificent symphony created from its sounds."

Kimblee sighed ecstatically as he seemed to recall a medley of pieces collected in his years of conducting concertos of explosions and screams. Ready to commit Riza's atonement to its punishment, his hands spanned the flare of her hips and knees forced her thighs apart.

"It's funny how two people who were denied the master's flame should come together like this in war to help fan it." His pelvis cradled snugly into her backside and brought hard flesh to her cusp where it chafed impatiently at its downy entrance.

"I wonder though if Berthold Hawkeye sorely underestimated the fire in the soul of the apprentice he eventually gave flame to. Because don't you agree how the _'Hero of Ishval'_ is doing such a stunning job of using it?" He leaned over to the side of her face, ardent grunts steaming onto her cheek.

Riza squirmed out of the latch of his lap. Fingers dug viciously into her hips to grind her back into it. "Stop it," she pleaded.

"... but none so stunning as the cruel lengths your father went to hide it. That was harsh." Words poured hotly, thickly into her ear.

"Stop, please."_ Damn it, take me now … Take everything._

"I'm actually quite _jealous_."

A quick thrust followed and Riza cried out sharply as Kimblee sank deeply into her. Whether it was from the sting of his last words or from his girth filling her needful void, she knew not anymore. The only wretched certainty was how her treasonous body was so ready for him. She bit on her lip to stem a sob, but mounting pleasure won over her need for more tears.

"Shhhh … There, there. I promised I'd make you forget, didn't I?"

She gave a brisk nod and with her flushed cheek rubbing against the wall and fingertips clutched to its surface, the young woman calmly rode the mellow rhythm of his rocking which was slow like an adagio. Apologies played like a mantra in her head for baring secrets entrusted to her by the two men closest to her; how easily she had divulged it to another. Yet somehow, she was thankful – and fortunate – this man cared nothing for them.

She didn't think she could be so lucky next time.

_He wants only this …_ Riza tried to convince herself, the hoods of her eyes fluttering in approaching ecstasy. _Just this … o-ohh …_ Kimblee's broad strokes grazed over a sensitive spot high up within her keep. Again. And again. Warm, wet velvet wrapped tighter around his sliding length in a clinch. It was his turn to trill an approving growl with adroit long fingers of one hand returning the favor on her swollen bud of nerves while the other cupped over her fist bracing the wall.

Two hands stained with so much blood clasped, sodden with the lesser sins of sex and sweat. The ironic yet intimate gesture surprised Riza; nonetheless, she took slight comfort in the way they moved in concert as though dancing a tango. Time and memory had already been drowned in the seemingly endless ebb and flow of their coupling, her ripe body opened up to the sensation of being ravaged in a ménage à trois of textures – hot, sweat-drenched muscle against dewy skin against cold, grainy stone. Kimblee intensified his pace. Riza held fast. Her head whiplashed onto his broad shoulder and her hand reached back to comb into his hair and boldly press him to the crook of her neck.

As he nipped and sucked ravenously on her offering of skin, the staggering mélange of sensations caused Riza's timid whimpers to crescendo into demanding moans that punctuated her labored panting. Needing to bring the symphony of her suffering to its finalé, the alchemist grabbed her by the waist and wrestled her off the sheets that had gathered in a heap around their knees. He threw her face down back into the bed, jerking her hips upward before swiftly re-entering from behind her suppliant form.

Riza could swear Kimblee was moving to a grandiose sonata he exuberantly composed in his mind, with her coasting in glissando with him. The tempos and melodies changed with each movement; at first mute to her ears, but then she began to catch the sonorous accents … the howl of the wind … the percussion beats of the rain … distant roars of thunder … the rhythmic creaking of the bed … the lullaby of skin gliding on skin … all harmonizing with the primal music of their mating. Thoughts of death and sin deafened under the impassioned notes as her keening voice started to join in accompaniment. Sonata was now aria.

Riza reached out and gripped the metal bars at the head of the bed, her body flexing sinuously to take in Kimblee to the hilt. Every push and pull on her was a vicious cycle of emptying and filling … pain out, pleasure in … until she was simply a tightly sprung coil holding back a swarm of butterflies waiting to be snapped.

One thrust burying far into her channel was all it took to bring her over the precipice. The tense knot in her belly unwound sending countless neurons flying in, around, and about her quaking form, and with them, every ache she had painstakingly kept prisoner of her internal war was finally released.

Riza tossed her head back in crooning soft pleading mewls as heat flooded her veins, which mounted outright into unbridled wails when, moments later, she felt a warm, smooth torrent rushing in her core. Never had she experienced such a luxuriant vortex of sensations within that she selfishly closed her coated pulsating walls around them, hoping to contain the churning for a little while longer.

But soon, even the soldier's trained endurance failed her and she crumpled limply into the covers, the slippery entanglements reluctantly loosened. As she smothered her heaving into the pillow and shook off the straggling jolts of her climax, Riza knew her flesh, her mind – her soul – had fractured into thousands of pieces and in each jagged piece was a requiem. The Crimson Alchemist had broken her _… no …_ she had already been riddled with cracks since long ago; he was merely there for the shattering. For the moment, she remembered nothing. No faces. No promises. Not even her own name. And oh, how it was so complete, so liberating, so devastating …

Her last spasm floated out of her like a ghost fading into darkness.

… _so good._

* * *

><p><em>(to be concluded)<em>


	4. Act IV: Requiem in Brimstone and Fire

**A/N: **Everything is Arakawa's; I simply borrow her strings and move her characters in a moderately different (not too OOC, I hope) direction. Warning: Chapter rated for strong sexual situations, including slight non-con. Thanks for reading. I hope this was as good a read as it was a guilty pleasure for me to write. ^^

* * *

><p>Act IV: Requiem in Brimstone and Fire<p>

* * *

><p>Kimblee was a man of many heresies. But never before was he a heretic to his own beloved alchemy.<p>

Yet as he continued prodding furiously at young Riza Hawkeye's comely depths, here he was – however briefly - daring to consider this to be a more pleasurable act than his transmutations. In terms of permanence and sheer spectacle, this indeed made a very pale comparison. But the more he regarded the broken blonde woman prostrated wantonly before him holding on desperately to the bed rails yet undulating so smoothly to his sexual symphony, the more his mind debated.

Maybe he had just been without a woman for too long, longer still without a woman of this … this caliber and pedigree. Or perhaps she presented him some sort of challenge. No doubt, making women scream in terror required far less effort from him than making them scream in ecstasy, relatively speaking. And this one – _ugh_ – was being mighty stubborn about lending her voice to music he composed specifically _for her_.

He rode on that last idea even as it drifted as a foggy afterthought in his mind. Animal grunts of pleasure unlocked deep from Kimblee's throat when her rippling wet warmth swaddled tighter around his length and he attempted fiercely to stave off release. Damn that vixen for tormenting him with the exquisite pain of having to sing to his own composition before she – the diva – could reach her chorus. Their tactile duet made such an obscene melody that, once or twice, she had made him skip his place in his flawlessly arranged rhythm. But heavens help him if he could ignore the sight and feel of her – all quiet desperation and _damage_ … such a flimsily held together body of damage whose seams he was testing relentlessly to its limits and which he wanted to rip so badly to make her cry out.

She asked for penitence, of which he would dole out heavily. But he certainly wasn't out to actually _fix _her.

_Fuck. _How he wanted this. And with her. Only her, an oasis, in this infernal desert. Desire had breached his dam of control, overtaken it … he didn't realize he could actually miss that feeling of freefall.

Kimblee pressed further forward, slithering his chest to-and-fro across Riza's back like the serpents that adorned it. With one hand jamming her shoulder firmly into the mattress and the other clamped to her thigh, angling her plumb with his every thrust; he hazarded a quick brush of his lips on her wet cheek. His breathless voice ghosted, "Come, my dear. Give in to your penance. I won't stop until you accept what you want …

"over … " Faster.

"and over ..." Harder.

"again." Deeper. Liquid heat engulfed him and he never knew such a satisfying burn.

Under the rising whimpers, he could finally hear the agonized music of her heart, mind, and soul crumbling. It was just as loud as any of the physical explosions his hands could transmute because, inside, she was screaming ... screaming with an angry fire that was a slow burn rather than a conflagration. He knew those fires blazed hotter than a thousand suns and he was only too happy to kindle it so they could dance to her cathartic cries.

And then her voice broke through; the wonderful keening notes surging straight from her soul, out her throat, into his ears, and down his spine. The wails sent him plunging after her – fully, unequivocally – and his voice melded with hers in a joyful ode to suffering and her temporal freedom from it.

Kimblee huffed a deep, painfully relieved sigh and closed his eyes. With enthralled expectation, the rattle in his bones told him he would be hearing much more thunderous music before the day was through. Note after note. Soundwave after soundwave. This interlude teased his palate for feasts that were to come.

Wordlessly, the pair caught their breaths and wallowed in the pleasant warmth of their mingled releases before Riza slid off and curled fetally on her side into the sheets. No applause came for their passionate duet in the quietude of that cold, dark chamber save for the heavy pattering of the rain outside. The alchemist knelt before her mildly perturbed. For someone with the gift of flawless memory, how could he have forgotten that this kind of explosion could be just as fulfilling as the real thing?

Or maybe he never had that particular memory with someone in the first place.

_This woman … _She was just like his unique quantum-based alchemy, requiring the perfect combination of opposing elements and forces to create the right volatility. It was no wonder he'd been so – attracted.

Kimblee chuckled quietly to himself. Maybe ... he wasn't being such a heretic after all.

Wanting to take a good look at the aftermath of the sniper's chosen chastisement, he shifted her on the bed so that she was on her back. Riza posed limply under his gaze, her nude form a seductive statue of guilty pleasure. Her head was turned away from him – teeth lightly biting on a corner of her lip sheepishly yet endearingly, and the lovely round swell of her breasts quivering with each struggling gasp. It was arousing how hard she tried to regain control of her body even as she fought to extend her completion.

He smirked at her.

She slanted her eyes in open contempt and a raised hand slapped hard across his cheek.

"You didn't have to bring my father into this … Major," Riza angrily decried. She fought to twist back on her side but Kimblee swiftly manacled errant fists to each side of her head on impulse, latching her in position.

He stared at her incredulously for a while even as he felt a trickle of blood form at the corner of his mouth.

_Volatility, indeed._

Seconds dragged by so very slowly in the frozen sphere of the unimaginable as her insolence deteriorated into bug-eyed terror. "Sir, I'm s-sorry. I – I don't know what came over me. " The woman's eyes deflected in frightened self-recrimination as she noticed the bleeding. He could tell she expected to be enveloped in the familiar blue haze of alchemic activation; instead, he let her tremble beneath his torturous stillness and patiently watched her dilated eyes track the slow creep of his blood until a drop of it fell tantalizingly on a heaving breast. Smiling darkly, the man bent over, lashed out his tongue and lapped up the crimson trail staining her alabaster flesh before circling back to suckle on its haughty, erect tip. She let loose a shocked squeal.

A back of a hand wiping at his cut mouth and a booming laugh later, he had shut her up further with a forceful kiss and palms roaming punishingly across her body. Feeling him intrude searchingly, she tilted her head back with a guilty moan, jaw slacking and tongue tangling with his in a conciliatory offer.

"I wonder what I would've done if I actually didn't find feisty women entertaining," he said, breaking off the kiss and threading his hand into her damp hair. He made sure she was aware how the tattooed circle on it was in direct contact with her head (should she try anything less amusing).

"And here I thought you weren't going to make this difficult."

"You said my father was harsh for what he'd done. I'd say you're doing a pretty good job of it yourself," Riza riposted caustically, pacing her breaths.

The alchemist darted an indulgent glance down at the apex of her sticky, glossed thighs. "Oh, so this is what people call being 'harsh' nowadays?"

Blushing furiously, she turned over to her side and furled into a ball under him.

"I wondered if you'd be peeved about something else; such as the fact I didn't use a prophylactic on you."

"Oh. Oh, that … I haven't had my cycle in months since I entered the fray. Due to stress and improper nutrition according to the doctor," the soldier sighed sullenly. "So, I'll be just fine on that front. I think." She cast a cagey sideways look bordering on mild panic. "That is unless you were referring to –"

Kimblee arched a high, perfectly groomed eyebrow and countered with a scoff. "If you're implying I was somehow ... rabid; of course, you have nothing to worry about there."

Her soft exhale of air hinted at relief. "I would have expected nothing of the sort from someone like you, sir."

The statement evoked a charmed snort from him. Pushing back stray wisps of hair that had plastered to his face, the alchemist rolled to Riza's side, scooping her up as he leaned back into the headboard so that she was partially on top of him. He cradled her chin and gently moved her head from where it was resting on his chest to look at her. Bathed as they were in the muted ochre and sienna patina cast by the flickering lamplight, he supposed a less jaded man than he might have even seen this post-coital cuddle as romantic.

Instead, his rapt attention was on the deep shade of rose dusting across her pale cheeks, something which he remembered seeing exactly some ten years before when she was just a shy, sad little girl in a cage peeking a glimpse at the cocky seventeen-year-old alchemy student on the doorstep of her father's shabby manor.

Kimblee chuckled at the perverse payback he had just given the old flame master. One, for dousing his hopes that day and, two, for not seeing how much his daughter could burn – in so many ways he never would have expected.

That man's now-grown daughter stared up at him curiously.

"It's nothing. I was just thinking back to when I first saw you and how you've grown up nicely despite your rather ... strange circumstances." His arm rested casually on her magnificent back, a fingertip idly drawing ouroborous circles on it. The canary may have long been freed from her father's cage but she had certainly flown into another.

"We - _I_ – managed. " Riza muttered vaguely. She nestled her head back into Kimblee's chest, allowing herself to be lulled into a numbing trance by his strong, even heartbeats.

"But nicely?" she derided. "The choices I've made – even up till now – haven't always been kind to me. And no matter how many times I ask to forget the fact that I made them, it will never be more than the times I'll ask to be forgiven …

"I deserve each and every punishment those choices bring me."

"Deserve, you say? Deserve what punishment?" Kimblee retorted, his words sternly edged. "Are you referring to the foolish amounts of pain and guilt you're forcing yourself to feel for simply doing your job well?"

"I'm not _forcing_ those feelings, sir!"

"Ah, then tell me this; do you not feel you deserve the rewards, pride, and enjoyment which also come with that exact same job well done?"

Riza looked up from under the unruly sunshine gold of her hair, a stark contrast to widened eyes whose pupils had sunken into fathomless tar pits.

"Take this little furlough of ours," he hypothesized. "How is this much different from, say, the Amestrian Army awarding you with medals for excellence in sharpshooting and distinguished service in this war – which, I have no doubt, you will be receiving upon your graduation?

"Would you seriously refuse the pleasure of receiving them?"

Her gaze shied away. She mumbled, "I never joined the army seeking medals or glory, sir."

"You've certainly earned them, though. And why strive to earn them if there's no intent to appreciate?" The officer sighed at her attempt to be ambiguous with a non-sequitur. They swam deep in their own thoughts for a moment until a brisk breeze blew in from the open window and Riza instinctively tucked closer to him for warmth, her legs sliding up and entwining in his loose embrace. Feeling his groin stir restlessly, he decided to fiddle with the fine lines of her morality again. Mischievously, his hand delved between her thighs where he busily coated his fingers in the mixed essences that had jelled there.

"So, what if I did this?" he asked in a trifling tone as he parted her silky thatch and plundered the inner folds of supple flesh for the swollen pink nub it sought to hide from his touch. Finding it, the pads of his wet fingertips gently lathered it up in slow, concentric circles. "Your mind is in misery telling you that you do not deserve the pleasure this is giving, and yet your body excitedly proves that it does."

Riza drew in a sharp hiss. "It just proves the body is weak," she argued, the pitch of her voice starting to crack. Her hips bucked slightly, breaths quickened. He saw surrender beginning to rear its pretty little head again.

"No. It just proves you are _human_. Why not accept this indulgence you have every right to feel?"

She moaned huskily, fingertips clawing into his shoulders, thighs ensnaring his wandering hand. "No, no more … please … not … not yet ..."

The pleas fell deaf to his ears, but the tiny rude noises made by his digits working on her succulent skin drove him utterly mad. Soon, her voice went small and withered. _"Don't … stop."_

"I'll take that as a request for an encore then." Kimblee withdrew his hand, took her face and traced his thumb across her ravaged lips, parting them with suggestive intent. She blinked. Neither did she recoil. By no means was her absolution complete. Not if he could help it.

"You may forever scourge yourself for committing what you consider sins. But you need not reject the simple joys that are of no consequence to them," he challenged.

"Now do you understand how you can have it both ways?"

"Yes," Riza drawled weakly. Slowly removing his fingers from her lips, she began a timorous, deliberate slide down his reclining form with hands traversing his swathes of lean muscle. Defiance diluted in her eyes. Reluctance devolved into greed.

He smiled in giddy anticipation. "Then don't deny what you need. Go ahead and take all that you _deserve _…

"_Sing_ more for me please, Miss Hawkeye."

* * *

><p>Riza awoke to soft humming drifting from the man next to her. The song was dissonant in its randomness yet passionate and strangely attuned to the imaginary music they had made love to all night.<p>

_Made love._ Was that what they did? She hardly thought so while wincing off the dull aches that pulsed in places where her body attempted to move. If spent muscles were any indication, their act was all raw sex – beyond bestial, an unfeeling mating of monsters caught in a hedonistic whirlpool of mindless desire.

Outside, it seemed the storm had waned at the same time her strength did, having settled into a steady shower that brought in a stream of fresh, clean air charged with ozone and free of the blood-misted dust that was the stifling atmosphere of Ishval. Riza filled her lungs to the brim with its purity, disappointed at how ephemeral it was especially since she also caught whiffs of her humiliation and his heresy – their debauchery – hanging oppressively around them.

The scents uncomfortably took her back to the previous events that sleep had failed to wipe away. In a blur of hands and mouths and limbs and shadows dancing the long hours away, she remembered Kimblee taking her many times in as many ways as he wanted. This she willingly let him if only to prolong the memory gaps where she remembered nothing. The young woman admitted guiltily that he had indeed been too good – a virtuoso, in fact – at accomplishing what he had intended for her. Nary an elegy for the dead crossed her mind in those lost hours.

Rousing herself out of liminality, Riza schooled herself to withdraw from this experience carefully, knowing how such anesthetic yet stimulating feelings could easily become addictive, like a drug so difficult to quit. Ironically, however; she had felt safe beneath his feverish, hard, yet graceful body, holding on to him tightly even as he filled her repeatedly. As time wound down, they had gradually settled into a leisurely tangle. She knew it was a very, very false sense of security coming from a man who could end her life in a second. And yet, she openly submitted – believed – in the soothing coos (_"Don't be scared when I touch you there ..."_) and compliments (_"you should grow out your hair; it reminds me of the lovely corn silk strands fluttering in the southern fields where I practiced my alchemy ..."_) and melting embraces she had never received before from anyone else.

But Riza thought she had him all figured out by now, and the sadistic cruelty of his unbearable tenderness in the end was so unfair she almost wanted to cry.

Gingerly, she turned to her humming bedside companion who laid on his side watching her with head propped on a hand. With wild raven hair falling rakishly over his eyes, he greeted her with a devilish smile slashing across his features.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," he announced, interrupting his tune.

Riza silently berated herself for finding the man undeniably attractive, more so for prickling with goosebumps as she recalled the maddening things with which he had taunted her. "Sir, how long have I been asleep?" she asked raspily, throat parched and mouth cottony with his and her mingled aftertastes. To her abject shame, it wasn't … unpleasant. She drew the blankets closer to her body, realizing belatedly how absurd the effort was after all of his senses had already acquainted with it so thoroughly.

"Not long. About half an hour." Kimblee teasingly ruched down the sheet covering her breasts where fingertips played connect-the-dots on the livid bite marks he had voraciously left. "Don't worry. You have more than enough time to make it to your next outpost at 0400 hours. I'd have made sure of that."

The sniper gently brushed his hand off by pulling up the cover over her chest and groggily sitting up. She was shaken back into full alertness by the far-off staccato of gunfire that had pierced the mercurial ceasefire and, shifting on the bed to look up through the window, saw a green flare shooting up into the sky signaling the resumption of hostilities. Soon, the pleasing petrichor-scented air would be overwhelmed by the pervasive smell of diesel exhaust, sulfur – and the acrid stench of burnt flesh.

Frowning, Riza pressed a palm to her forehead as if to push back a chronic pounding headache. Had she really sold herself cheaply for an exquisite yet fleeting salve only to wake up to a harsh – and more permanent – reality?

A small part of her wished she hadn't woken up at all.

"I figured they wouldn't wait until the crack of dawn." Kimblee held out a canteen of water to her with a smile. "You don't mind if I rummaged through your pack for a drink, do you?"

The cadet shook her head and took the canteen from him. Popping off the cap, she took a long, grateful swig. She surveyed the nest of disarray around her … scrunched up pillows, rumpled blankets, linens loose off the mattress … yet, oddly, she noticed her undergarments had been folded neatly and placed at the foot of the bed. She drew her legs to her chest, the sticky friction of her thighs reminding her of just how much of a mess she got herself into.

Having drunk her fill of water, Riza set the flask on the dresser next to her handgun and Kimblee's State Alchemist pocket watch and chain. She admired how he had managed to keep the burnished silver impossibly gleaming through all the blood and grit it was exposed to. It was like he was operating in a time vacuum of his own, conducting business not as though he was in war but as though breezing dandily through an upper-crust social calendar. A meticulously planned one.

Eyes narrowing, she warily looked askance at the lounging officer. "I'm not sure I mentioned the time of my next shift to you, Major. Permission to ask how you knew I had to be at my next post by 0400 hours?"

He hardly shirked under the gauzy modesty of the soiled blankets. "It's no mystery at all. You're the only female soldier assigned to the vanguard and a capable, high-profile, and very attractive one at that. Why, of course, the high command has a vested …" he paused, "_strategic_ interest in keeping an eye on you."

Kimblee slowly sat up and began to flex the cricks out of his sore tendons and muscles. "Information concerning you is openly available should a man of my particular rank see fit to ask."

Riza's lower lip trembled at the shadowy revelation unraveling for her. The good ole' boy nature of the Amestrian Army was a culture she knew herself capable of adjusting to when she first joined, but finding herself smack dab in it began to creep her out. "And as for you, sir?" she asked, treading her words carefully. "Was your interest just as strategic?"

"My interest in your well-being is just as consistent as any other officer's, I suppose." He shrugged casually, but the reply seemed genuine. "After all, the army certainly doesn't want to lose its best sniper. Although – " He took a turn for the cryptic.

"A while ago, we talked about the wartime rewards we deserve, did we not?"

She started to cower. "Yes, sir. But I don't understand how that has anything to do with my shift."

"It's simple. Because unlike you, young lady, I'm not shy about asking for, receiving, or _taking_ – rewards and incentives when offered."

"Offered? Incentives? What do you mean by – " _Oh god._ She let the sentence sink in for some seconds before her hands knotted to her chest in distress and, feeling faint, she slumped awkwardly away from him to a far corner of the bed.

"I'll tell you a secret," Kimblee drew up a knee and rested a forearm on it. He leaned toward the swooning girl with gold eyes sparkling. "If there's one small weakness I have that the army high command has on me, it's that I don't attempt to hide the way I look at a beautiful, intriguing woman."

Riza whipped her face away, moisture welling under her batting lashes. By now, the reasons why being too many and too conflicting to count off.

"How … why is this even allowed? Are all officers privy to this … this – ?" She couldn't find the right, _horrifying,_ words. _Please no, he ... he couldn't possibly be one of them._

"Fewer than you think, mostly upper echelon."

"And the women?"

"And some men, actually. Anyone's fair game in this insufferably barren place. But ... I can only speak for myself." The glint in Kimblee's eyes softened at her. "My sights had always been set on only one."

Despite all she heard, his admission was flattering. "Was I even afforded a choice in this at all?" she ventured timidly ... tiredly. The room ... the bed once so sultry with their sex was now cold as ice.

"Of course. Do I need to replay the events of the past three hours for you?"

"But what if … what if I happened to make the _other_ choice?"

The alchemist gave a thin, enigmatic smile. "One of us would have still collected on the promised rewards ...

"And I, for one, never fail to collect on mine."

Riza blinked rapidly and the tears spilled over onto her cheeks in silence. She waited for him to scold her once again for such an emotional response to her naiveté . Yet to her surprise, none came.

"Looking back and asking 'what-ifs' are irrelevant. Simply said, the way things have turned out has made everything much _easier_ on both of us." His declaration was as direct and hard as his conscience was clear. "In time, you may allow yourself to see the wisdom of your choice, appreciate it even.

"By the way, don't be surprised if you happen to find one of those new .338 caliber sniper rifles on your cot soon. The army is nothing if not generous to its stellar, _cooperative_ soldiers."

Never did such a diplomatic reply sound as infuriating – and true – to her ears as this.

"I see," she replied plainly, finally staring back at him without an ounce of surprise and too numb to even register resignation or dejection – only acceptance. With nuanced movements, Riza collected her lingerie and wrapped the bedcovers (the color of scarlet, _how fitting_) around herself as she dragged out of the bed. Heading towards the scullery, she limped off her first steps. She realized how this had looked and seethed quietly as she forced herself to walk evenly to the sink pulling the sheet behind her like a gown's train made of blood. _Too late. _The young woman could already feel the Crimson Alchemist's possession of her branded into her back, proud of how he had broken and pleasured her so much. The intensity of his gaze stripped her bare and spread-eagled all over again.

Riza bent over the sink resisting the urge to retch violently. She turned on the faucet and splashed its weak stream onto her face. She could laugh bitterly at how Ishval was so unfortunately tainted by such redness and blood that even the scarce, brackish water was tinged by the iron taste and smell of it. Still, she rinsed herself in the meager purity it offered, took a corner of the sheet, soaked it, and scrubbed herself vigorously of the evidence left by her mistake … choice … fate … bad luck. Whatever. It didn't matter anymore. No amount of scrubbing would wash away the indelible mark it left in her mind anyway.

"Now, now. Was I really that bad?" Kimblee's lips puckered into a pout as he watched her impetuously remove traces of him on her. There was a faux wounded lilt to his rich voice.

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, water dripping from the blonde fringes of her hair. She cursed at the surrealism of it all, at how she and so many others had aged whole lifetimes in this war; yet, Kimblee, that devil, there he sat so hale, handsome, and carefree, daring to look younger than his twenty-seven odd years … daring to look so – _happy_.

After drying herself as much as she could, Riza walked to her things on the table and dropped the cover onto the floor. Briefly displaying the full pillar of her nakedness to the officer's prying, delighted eyes (partly in dignified anger and partly in lofty pride), she proceeded to put on her clothes as perfunctorily as she had removed them for him. She wondered if she could ever suffer a penitence that wouldn't leave her feeling battered, used, and unclean. Her penance seemed to parallel her path, a path which started from her choice to disrobe a deadly secret to one man, and now she made her bed with another – laid in it, cried in it, fucked in it.

No. There would be no clean forgiveness for one already damned, only – endurance.

The sniper dressed slowly, aimlessly. Turning to the bureau, there she found her gun and his silver pocket watch side-by-side, mocking her. Without the humans wielding them, they made a fine, handsome picture. With them, they painted a canvas spattered with blood. She took the pistol and placed it on the dining table next to her rifle before belting on her hip holster. What more was there to endure – and what more desperate lengths was she willing to go to endure them? _Arms and alchemy_. They were the easiest things to rely on when solving the world's problems, but the most difficult to consider using when trying to solve your own.

She tried to imagine an Amestris without all the uniformed pieces on the Führer's chessboard; wondered if they all just turned their weapons and alchemy on themselves and each other whether that would solve anything. And she knew that, no, it would not. There would just be another ambitious boot-licker, another itchy-fingered shooter, another deadly alchemist …

Riza paused abruptly in the middle of securing her gun to its holster. Perhaps … perhaps she could afford herself a small token of redemption after all by deciding to finish what her father – and his cowardly pride – couldn't.

Then and there, Riza decided nevermore would the Hawkeye name be a seductive lure to the brilliant, bold moths desiring the flame.

* * *

><p>"Miss Hawkeye."<p>

She turned slowly, with a newfound albeit tiny resolve. "Yes, Major?"

Kimblee swung his legs over the edge of the bed and patted the space next to him. "Come sit beside me for a while, if you please."

Cautiously, she obeyed, perching precariously on the bedside with her stoic gaze focused straight at his afterglow flushed face.

"Your uniform is crooked." He reached out and, like a loving father preparing his child for the first day of school, tenderly straightened Riza's jacket collar, slightly pulling up the black turtleneck shirt underneath to hide a berry-colored bruise that peered over it. Sheepishly, she tilted her neck upwards to allow him better access. Afterwards, his hands settled on her tense shoulders and, without skipping a beat, dryly blurted, "If I ended your life right now, I wonder how many Ishvalans I'd end up sparing?"

Finding even her sense of panic anaesthetized, she calmly took his rhetorically quirky bait knowing that if he had really wanted to kill her he would have done so on countless opportunities. "I cannot say, Major; however, I am quite sure that if I shot you right now I think I'd be saving more people than I would kill."

"I bet you would like to prove that theorem."

For a few fraught seconds, the soldier deliberated his parlay. "Not at all, sir," she answered with a soft shake of her head. "It is as you say, I suppose. You're doing your job just as I have been doing mine. You simply do yours far better than I ever will."

He exhibited much approval for her reply with a grin.

"But how is any of what we do fair?" Riza leaned into him, wide hazel eyes beseeching. "How is any of what's happening considered equivalent exchange?"

Kimblee laughed, putting his hands up in jest. "Oh, but it is, my dear. Humans concoct moral and religious concepts to justify their labeling of things that don't go the way they want as evil or wrong or unfair. But in reality, cause-and-effect doesn't look at things as right and wrong, it only concerns itself with balance. It is only under moral precepts that humans complain that ...

"equivalent doesn't always mean _fair._"

His hands floated back down on her, ending in a curve into her head and cheek. "But this exchange between us … you'd agree was both equivalent and _fair, _don't you?"

The alchemist pressed forward into an unexpected kiss. But unlike the crushing urgency of the night's previous seductions, this chaste contact blanketed her lips in a delectable down of warm caresses – like a longtime lover's. Blinking back her surprise, she almost responded … _almost _… remembering just in time how she still remained a pawn – and only a pawn – in his – and the whole damn military's – elaborate game.

Or was she? It suddenly occurred to Riza that she might have stopped playing the game at some point and became his willing trophy. A trophy – his reward – he carefully set on winning and (dare she fancy?) cherishing. The insane thought made her head spin, that this man was capable of applying such alien and abstract concepts of caring and love with anyone ... someone ...

_With her._

Tentatively, she closed her eyes and let her lips seal very delicately into his. Despite everything, Crimson Alchemist Solf J. Kimblee would never seem as human to her as he did right now.

She ended the kiss to a shiver and a quick gulp of breath. "I beg to disagree, sir." Riza murmured flatly, tempering the sadness that threatened to tinge her words. "Our exchange was fair, true, but not equivalent. I … I truly wanted to like you, sir, but I find that I … don't."

His steady expression maintained an unaffected, yet oddly knowing, air. "Don't or _can't_?" he intimated with an affectionate squeeze to her cheek. He clicked his tongue and gave a slight shrug. "Ah, well, 'tis a rare thing for me to be proven wrong in this case. A pity about that, though, because I happen to like you very much."

Her half-lidded eyes averted. She wondered why the lump she forced herself to swallow hurt as bad as it did.

Kimblee's face closed in to her ear for a whisper. "For the record, if you had made the other, more _unfortunate_ choice, I still would've done my utmost to make things pleasantly tolerable. I genuinely do not want to lay waste to someone like you."

"That's very … kind of you, sir," Riza's voice droned sedately across his hair as she carefully removed his hand from her clammy cheek. Why, oh why, was his touch so warm to make her reluctant about letting it go?

He shrunk away yet clutched back at her hand, bringing the fingertips to his lips. "Take care of these beautiful, brutal weapons, my dear. And I don't think I need to remind you again; our motives in this war – and in life – may be different, but like me, you chose to administer death as your occupation. There's no turning back – not now, not ever.

"Do your job and do it well."

The soldier bobbed her head weakly and licked her stinging lips. She permitted herself a taste of him – and her sin – one last time. "I should take my leave now, sir."

"That you should," he agreed, withdrawing his hand with a neutral smile.

In the dim glow of the shadow-cast room, Riza thought she saw the smile's corners downturn slightly. But before she risked thinking more of it, she bolted off the bed to the table where she hurriedly fastened her cloak and collected her things. She had already turned the doorknob to make a quick exit when she suddenly hesitated.

Doing an about-face, she spoke up; her tone clipped, but strong. "Major Kimblee, What we … what I did ... No, I think _what happened_ was a mistake, even … even though we both got what we _deserved_ out of this ..." she stalled, mind dithering at what she said next.

"But, thank you."

The State Alchemist started binding his hair back into its usual coifed ponytail. "Oh? For what exactly?" he asked, humoring her with an interested cock of his head.

"I may be a broken mess right now, but because of this, somehow … I think I now know how to fix myself." _Because of you, _was what she wanted, but refused, to say.

He nodded. "Well done, Miss … or shall I say, _Lieutenant _Hawkeye. Do whatever is absolutely necessary to make you feel alive; absolutely anything that helps you move forward and survive. Do that and I assure you, death will cease to be a stranger."

Riza acknowledged his words with a click of her heels and a cursory salute. "Major Kimblee, sir." And with that, she opened the door and disappeared into the hallway.

* * *

><p>Kimblee postured his back regally as agile fingers made neat, quick work of winding and knotting the white tie around his cord of black hair. He closed his eyes, concentrating sharp ears to the sniper's retreat across the hallways where he could catch the clumsy scurrying in her footsteps and the soft sniffling and hiccups that were on the verge of erupting into sobs.<p>

Her sounds brought a thin veil of regret clouding over the alchemist, puzzling him briefly. It was such a pity that Berthold Hawkeye had been so skeptical of his daughter's ability to birth and nurture fire. She certainly proved she had the skill to handle it. Under extremely different circumstances and with a slight adjustment in her temperament, he could very well envision himself making much magnificent music with her on – and off – the field. That if he weren't a lone wolf on his exploits by choice, she could've made an excellent partner.

_Partner. _Kimblee was taken slightly aback by that quaint notion. His fingers drummed thoughtfully on his lips, her delicious memory still lingering on them. He burst into chortles, almost feeling foolish for imagining the sort. Hawkeye was the odd, discordant – but not at all sour – note in this ode to war he was composing, yet somehow, he liked hearing it play over and over in his mind.

His hand aimlessly grabbed at a corner of the rumpled bedsheet beside him and held it to his nose, breathing in the musky scent of her … of them … and remembering how they alternated between wrestling and slow-dancing on its fabric.

But just as easily as Kimblee had smiled at the reminiscence, so too easily had he stopped. Eyes snapping open and then narrowing ruthlessly, he crushed the sheet in his fist and threw it back as though some higher authority within had admonished him for even considering such a sentimental act.

Admittedly, he welcomed the respite, liking nothing more than to shack up all day in this foxhole with her, picking at her body and soul like a vulture to a prized carcass. After all, his superiors (how he sneered at calling them such, maybe he would remedy that soon enough) had practically thrown the woman at him, a perk in exchange for his special … _cooperation_. It wasn't as if he actually needed an incentive to play with their little experiments; then again, she was much too tasty an apéritif to refuse and that if there was possibly more reason for him to want the war to go on, it was for another chance to seek her out and play the perverse priest to her penitent yet again.

The alchemist allowed a shiver to spiral down his spine at that divine fantasy. Alas, there was too much work to be done, work he would enjoy just as much, if not more so. Sighing melodramatically yet contentedly, he stretched out, stood up, and gathered all of his clothes that he had piled neatly onto a chair. He brought them back bedside and immediately noticed an item that had fallen out of a trouser pocket to the floor.

"Ah, so silly of me," Kimblee chuckled to himself as he picked up the sliver of red stone and sat down on the bed to admire her angry facets. She glowed petulantly as though to remind him of who owned his soul. Almost apologetically, he cradled her in the berth of the solar sigil crested on his right palm.

Darling, sorrowful Riza Hawkeye. He would miss her fondly, he supposed, and her ghost would make such good company in the long, lonely nights he was sure were to come. His memory had been burned explicitly with the feel of her ample curves ... the smoke-tinged candied nectar of her drenched skin … the vision of her misery and ecstasy … the sound of her guilt-ridden pain and pleasure. They would all come together in a beautiful nocturne he could replay and make love to again and again during the quieter, more reflective movements of his never-ending symphony.

But for now, she would lie in slumber in the little music box of his mind because what was one anguished voice – no matter how sweet – compared to the thundering chorus of thousands?

Outside, in the distance of the northern boundaries of Kanda, a whooshing sound sped through the oxygen-replenished air followed by the sonic shock of an explosion. As the pressure waves rattled the furniture around him, a sardonic grin marred Kimblee's placid expression. Flame had risen early for the race, so it seemed. Soon, a vivid palette of red-orange filtered in from the window above, blotting out the pure white moonlight that had dared to rear itself through clearing skies.

The Crimson Alchemist plopped back into the mattress where he held up the blood jewel, angling it just so for its prism to catch the rays of fiery light. In the gleam that reflected back at his equally bright eyes, he could hear the howls beckoning his body and soul ... calling to him, urging him to unleash the hell-bound choir to sing along with his haunting symphony … waiting for him to bring brimstone to join the inferno already being spread by flame.

"Patience," Kimblee whispered to her. "His is but a mere overture to our grand finalé." Slowly, he brought the stone to his lips where he brushed it with a most delicate kiss before consuming her as a part of him. As she momentarily suffocated him, trapped him, exhilarated him in that frightening realm between life and death; a jolt slashed through his nerves like a scythe, filling him with so much ethereal energy to make him feel so alive as he had never felt before. He felt _immortal, _god-like even, being this close and partnered with death.

_Yes ... yes ... _this combined orchestra would make music so loud to pierce the sky and bring the sounds of hell to the heavens.

He coasted on the paroxysms brought on by the sensual strangle, with the stone finally settling in the pit of his stomach. Breathing easily now, Kimblee laughed. Laughed at how inexplicably generous the army had been to him. Laughed at how the woman he had intended as a plaything in an age-old game unwittingly made him play the game himself. And laughed like there was no tomorrow because there was only today ...

The day he would complete his finest masterpiece of music and mass destruction.

* * *

><p>She couldn't run out of the room and building fast enough, making haste down the stairwell steps the way she knew she should have instead of taking that pivotal turn into the landing and following Kimblee into that foxhole he had set up and lured her into.<p>

Riza knew there would be no erasure of that experience from her being – he made sure of that. Even as she ran, her body shamelessly erupted in involuntary shudders as it could still feel the full battery of his sexual and psychological arsenal, awakening fears and depravities that only he had the temerity – and charm – to show her.

And yet, as she dashed out of the building and back into the all-too-real, all-too-harsh landscape of war before her, she stopped dead in her tracks. All around her was hell, in this sacred land Ishvala had proclaimed closest to heaven. There were no solemn calls for morning prayers, no red eyes seeking guidance from the stars. The voice and presence of Ishval's almighty god was now buried under rubbles of adobe, where sounds of gunshots and mortar bounced endlessly off the jagged stone and dust devils whipped up the remnants of his land and people in its cruel vortices.

The soldier could almost see the stunning beauty in the stark irony, of being in a place so near yet so far from heaven. And also, that it took a man like Kimblee to make her see the parallels between this and her need to forget. That in war, the idea of a heaven was just a temporary reprieve and hell would always, always follow.

The promise of hell was made all too good as Riza squinted against the windblown spikes of sand scouring upon her face and billowing cloak. A few feet ahead of her lay a solitary corpse staring up to the very heavens that had forsaken him.

She trudged slowly across the lane to where he fell among stacked crates leaning against the wall of a store. With every plodding, dreading step, her boots crunched over wet, rocky dirt. The large puddles left by the storm each reflected a piece of the moon and rippled with every echo of gunfire. The scene made such an eerie, open graveyard for one waiting hopelessly to be buried in it.

In its midst, Riza thus came before him. Once so gruesome and striking in his lotus-like pose, the corpse had since been washed off of its artful arterial patterns and brilliant reds by the rain, leaving in its wake just wet lumps of livid flesh and stained fabric around bleached bones.

He who was now a wilted flower was once an Ishvalan child; the one Kimblee had killed for _her_.

Swaying, she speared her rifle to the ground and collapsed onto one knee. It was one thing seeing – or not seeing – the child through a rifle scope; another to see the frail body so destroyed, his young life so interrupted, up close. Feeling as though her insides were burning and hacking at her from inside out, Riza half-staggered, half-crawled as far as her wobbly legs could take her. Reaching a corner of the building, she then crumpled on all fours and threw up into a gutter. Alone and with only herself to blame and pity, she allowed her last reservoir of tears to break through, sobbing silently and vomiting again until there was nothing left to empty but bitter bile.

Shivering and with her guts twisting in pain, Riza curled against the building wall, wiping herself off with her sleeve. Off in the distance, she heard the familiar hiss of oxygen being consumed followed by the pressurized boom of exploding gas mains. She didn't have to look up and behind her to figure out its origin. Instead, she covered her ears and smothered her crying face into bent knees.

_Stop … stop your part in this madness now … you're not like Kimblee … you're not like … me. The burden of fire was mine from birth – and it is mine to extinguish._

For long minutes, the soldier wept until there were no more tears and words of apology to spare. When she finally lifted her head, the sky in the southern horizon had been suffused with plumes of smoke and was lit up in red. She winced, sadly knowing her words would not reach him; after all, he was – like her – just doing his job.

She wearily got up on her feet and returned to grieve momentarily for the Ishvalan boy. Her gaze mapped his olive-skinned features now paled and she etched his face into her memory. He seemed at peace, almost asleep, as if cradled in the bosom of his strange god. A part of her was glad that death for him was apparently quick. Kimblee could be curiously kind in that way when he chose to be.

Crouching over him, Riza gently brushed wisps of platinum hair out of his face. His was innocent but resolute; she knew he wouldn't have hesitated to kill her given every chance, unlike herself. It took Kimblee of all people to do the deed on her behalf and to remind her of that awful truth. Numbly, she removed her black cloak and draped it carefully over the body, arranging the crates afterwards to hide him from view. She promised to come back and give the boy the burial he needed, if not exactly the one he deserved. Nevertheless, it was more than any other Ishvalan would be afforded in this hell. She owed him that at least as part of her never-ending requiem and atonement.

Ishval's sombre bell tolled the time. _0400 hours_. The woman turned, squared her shoulders and marched dutifully to her next outpost under the light of the crimson fire. Her tears had already started evaporating in the morning chill. As long as there was still one good man with a lofty dream to follow – and to protect – in all of this, she would stay the course no matter how scorched and corpse-littered it would become. As long as the sun kept rising, she would walk toward it. Each dawn would be bleeding red, that much was true, but it was still a dawn, nonetheless.

She realized, however, that the cruel cycle of grief and duty would continue for as long as the war would last. She now understood his parting words and what they meant - _death will cease to be a stranger when you become death itself._ Already ahead of her was another round of madness, and this early, she could already feel the next cycle's gears in motion; and already –

She was yearning for yet another chance to forget.

With this, Riza hoped and prayed to a god, any god, who would listen to the pleas of one who was damned; that – war or no war – she would never have to encounter Solf J. Kimblee ever again. She was afraid of what hell he would take her if there was a next time; feared seeing hell and death through his apathetic eyes. And it scared her even more that she would willingly go to him ... with him … to live dangerously through hell and death. Again.

And, this time, choose to never go back.

* * *

><p><em>~Fin~<em>


End file.
